


Blue Lotus

by glimmerFae (verfens)



Series: The Weight of Love [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Becoming Talon, Blackwatch Era, F/F, Possibly Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, but the rest has a solid plot, chapter 1 is introspective, side hate fuck moicy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-02 03:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16297526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verfens/pseuds/glimmerFae
Summary: The purest weapon was a sniper.  Just like a chemical reaction; you aimed, and you shot, and then someone would be dead on the ground in the distance. It only took seconds, so long as one didn’t miss. And such a feat was on that little T.V. screen in her ramshackle apartment in Dublin where she saw her.  Beyond not missing her mark, she took things to some new level inside of Moira, changing something that Moira couldn’t quite grasp, and yet so desperately needed to quantify.For all that she existed, for all she had known herself, she had always thought herself above such a human concept like attraction.And yet the woman on the screen was best in the war- in the world: Ana Amari.  Dressed in the blue of the UN team, just like her country’s national flower, the blue lotus-Moira’s addictive obsession.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This could also be considered a character piece for Moira, to be honest. I think she's more complicated than a lot of people view her as. Hence this clusterfuck of a fanfiction.
> 
> Anyways, Moira is the main focus, as is her relationship with Gabriel and the becoming of Reaper. Moirana is an underlying theme throughout the work, but it will bubble to a head and provide payoff. The fic will pick up after this prologue with Moira getting fired following the publication of her controversial work, and end as Zurich falls. 
> 
> There are side pairings, of course. But they aren't the focus. Feel free to ignore them, but I strongly hint at Mcreyes and past (?) r76 throughout the work, as well as unrequited mcgenji, with feelings caught on genji's behalf.

From the time she had been a little girl, growing up in the rural family farm, just outside of Dublin, there had been something drawing her to science.

Something about it was so clean, so orderly, making so much sense in a world where things rarely did, in just the perfect way. There was just a beauty to how everything had to add up and even out, the autarky of numbers, contained in their neat boundaries, the predictability of reactions once she could rationalize all of the inner gears of the mechanism she was examining. Even the way knowledge was presented was so perfectly streamlined, designed in a thought-provoking, and yet entirely practical format.

It was so unlike humanity- impractical, clunky and more often than not something standing in her way, with many aspects of it causing chaos purposefully for the sake of chaos. That was something she’d never understood, and began openly disliking because- just as she’d never understood it- it had never understood her. Worse, it had never tried to. That was humanity’s original sin in her book, unlike the words dramatically spat at her face in her parents hollow religion.

Amongst the small town she grew up in, she was regarded as a rather _odd_ girl, and not in the sense that her mother often tried to paint it as. No, despite her mother’s best efforts to convince Moira that the reason she was considered odd by most everyone around her, was her incredible intelligence alone, and the way she questioned everything, Moira had known there was more to it. Something intangible she’d never had addressed, something her mother had tried to soothe, but had never managed to erase.

Siobhan O’Deorain was a rather small and rounded woman, and when mother and daughter had gone out it had often looked like a bad introduction to a worn thin comedy routine where the jokes fell flat and the actors could hardly tolerate each other. No, once Moira began to dress like her elder brothers, it only accentuated the ridiculous nature of any relationship between them. And yet Siobhan, her mother, had only tried her best to make her eldest daughter act like how she’d envisioned her.

Moira had never faulted her for it. But that place had never felt like home.

Not with the accusations of being ‘odd.’ Not with the way she had always found her nose in a book in the library, her large glasses dwarfing her thin face, because not even her teachers could satisfy her all consuming hunger for knowledge. Not in how she would rescue the most interesting ‘pets’, with her mother’s horror and dismay at the sight of her surrounded by dangerous creatures. Her younger brothers had oo-ed and ahh-ed at the sight of them in their cages, but she’d never shared their caution about keeping them there. Nor did she share her younger sisters fear of _being_ odd- their petty desire to fit in at all other costs, including their own dignity.

Not with how she would grow taller than even her father, standing far above the crowd at a enormous, lanky 180 centimeters by the time she was 17- and she had yet to finish by then. By 18 she’d tower over most people she’d ever have in her life at a staggering 190 and some centimeters.  Her elder sisters had gawked at her lanky body and her oversized glasses and her entire essence. Her younger brothers failed to outsize her, and the resentment left there was palpable at the dinner table as she’d set it up while her mother blabbered on with their neighbors about how many schools her daughter had gotten into.

Not with her own acknowledgment that her _oddness_ went far beyond some paltry acknowledgement that she understood more of the world than 5 of her classmates in her graduating class combined. That was why she’d gotten accepted to better schools than anyone else in said class.

No- perhaps her acknowledgment was some of the source itself, how much she knew she was _better_ than all of them. But, still, that answer was still unsatisfactory; it wasn’t that entire intangible thing that set her apart from the very beginning.

She had applied to colleges all over, so eager to get out of Ireland, and yet… just when she found herself able, she was suddenly set back, and trapped all over again.

The Omnic Crisis had thrown the world asunder, and her with it. She found her beginnings in a small apartment in Dublin, working a pointless position in the bottom rungs of the government, examining omnics wiring and comparing the omnics that went rogue in England to the ones who had run to Ireland for safety and comparing their mechanical systems to organic ones to try and predict patterns in behaviors and future targets. The omnics were grateful for her work, and she was to be an author in her first scientific paper: on the alterations of omnic systems by God AI. She’d only been in a meager footnote, a brief mention, but it gave her a spot in a lab, somewhere down the line, when they could give her up.

After all, working on omnics wasn’t what she really had wanted to do, and yet, a soldier she was not.

For just under 10 years, due to that Crisis, she had been held back, forced to wait on the sidelines and do mind-numbing work in an entirely different field than what she truly was interested in, humanity’s mistakes and the horrific lashing out of it all throwing her grand plans completely asunder. Almost 10 years, she’d spent languishing instead of studying to achieve what she knew she could, given the resources and opportunity. Wasting her youthful potential, she knew it.

From the first moment she had seen omnics, the way that humans could manipulate their code, and then how they could manipulate their own code during her unfortunately tedious job examining their programming during the Crisis, she had known that she wanted to manipulate humanity’s “code,” genetics. She had always known that she wanted to study why she was different, from those days she’d been a child and someone had called her a freak because she had one evil red eye. Heterochromia, she knew it was called now, but back then it had made her wonder _why_ she had been marked different. Now she had her answer, to a degree: genetics. If she could only understand, then she could manipulate them.

Some of the answers came in the form of therapy, at her boss’s recommendation. A curious discovery; beyond the physical mutations, her very brain structure had a unique quirk. Though they were reluctant to call it antisocial personality disorder given she’d really had no issues with conduct in her childhood, her lack of care for moral boundaries did line up neatly with certain traits. It wasn’t a death sentence, as much as it was an answer.

Her own genetic sequence had flaws in it.

How curious, that this was that intangible thing others had always felt but never spoke about. She finally got an answer to another piece of that oddness that had made her stand out so clearly from her town.

There was only one other thing that stood out to her so clearly from the rest of the chaos in those days that she hadn’t yet answered. Only one other so-called fundamental mechanism of humanity that she so desperately sought to understand and yet, didn’t. Where humanity was bedeviled by creation, she was bedeviled by one thing in particular, something she had no experience with, something she had been considered odd for when she was younger for having no interest in- another piece of her strangeness as well, a final piece to a puzzle that made up Moira O’Deorain.  

She had first been infected by _it_ when she’d seen her on the small television in her apartment, have turned 23 and celebrating it with a fine bottle of whiskey.  Though she had known from the start that things on it were hardly true to life, there was something…completely all-consuming about this particular interest.

The purest weapon was a sniper. Just like a chemical reaction; you aimed, and you shot, and then someone would be dead on the ground in the distance. It only took seconds, so long as one didn’t miss. And such a feat was on that little T.V. screen in her ramshackle apartment in Dublin where she saw her. Beyond not missing her mark, she took things to some new level inside of Moira, changing something that Moira couldn’t quite grasp, and yet so desperately needed to quantify.

For all that she existed, for all she had known herself, she had always thought herself above such a human concept like _attraction_.

And yet the woman on the screen was best in the war- in the _world_ : Ana Amari. Dressed in the blue of the UN team, just like her country’s national flower, the blue lotus-

Moira’s addictive obsession.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Some people are molded by their aspirations, others by their hostilities.”  
> -Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week is the outlier as I'm starting, unfortunately. First two chaps go up today and then its 1 a week from here on out. However, chapters will also be much longer from here on out.

When Moira was a young woman, she had thought the biggest hurdle in her life was behind her. After the Crisis, it came down to finding the right school to achieve her goals in her desired fields, and that had brought her to Cambridge after she had proven herself long enough toiling away at mechanical engineering and coding. Those items were simply child’s play to her end game, and at 25 she finally got her chance to shine. 

She’d graduated at the top of her class, and excelled at any academic field she put herself to. It had felt like she had to some degree found a place and a calling, continuing her studies as she moved up in the academic world. Though her work as an assistant was to an extent degrading, it wasn’t long before her intellect clearly shone through, and she began running her own courses on the matter to justify her place at the university. 

Moira’s lab became the closest thing to a home that she would ever have. It had various items of significance, from a self-made calendar of Ana Amari covered in sticky notes and glitter pen writing, to her rabbits large enclosure encompassing the entire back corner of the room. Furthermore, it might as well been her one safe haven from the world. Humans were obnoxious to deal with, and if her experiences with them had taught her anything, it’s that they weren’t worth the trouble, 99% of the time.

  
That's why Moira had _animals_. No judging, no pesky feelings when they hurt her, no annoying back talk. It was just herself, her lab, her work, her music, and her pets. That was the way Moira liked things. Teaching, though it continued to fund her work, was dreadful. It was clear most of her students were in the field for petty things like money, or for credits to another degree. Those with respectable ambition were few and far between. But it was all for the sake of her greater purpose, and so she tolerated what she had to, and finally, in her thirties she published the culmination of her work so far. She had thought that it would change her life and propel her career to places far beyond what her university could ever do.

That was what she had thought, until she was handed a pink slip and an eviction notice two months later.

“I’m sorry, Dr. O’Deorain.” Her lab assistant said, ordinary brown eyes showing off his sympathy to her plight as his hands wrung together at the edge of his shirt. “It’s out of any of our hands.”

“James, this is, _intolerable_.” She stuttered, eyebrows rising in outrage, gesturing downwards. “The university has _always_ supported my work, they supported every stage of this process- from its very _inception_ all the way to the peer review process and final publishing.” She smacked the notice. “This is entirely out of line! What on earth is this in response to! I’ve been working on answering the outside critiques of my work, they’ve been following my progress on this!”

“It’s out of the university’s hands, too.” He lamented, plain James patting her shoulder and forcing her to maintain her composure as he attempted to comfort her. “It’s, well… one of the issues- Overwatch’s famous doctor, you know her?” He asked, and Moira nodded.

“Yes, the esteemed Dr. Ziegler.” She affirmed, shock beginning to settle in, fingers going to her lips in worry. “Her work on nanotechnology has infinite uses with my own work on genetics, and I credited her work in various places in the paper.”

“She read the paper.” He explained, nervous now. Oh, grand. She didn’t like how that sounded.

“And?” Moira asked, furrowing her brows. “Of course she read it. I sent it to her on account that her work was used judicially throughout the paper. What did she say, James?”

He rubbed his back, unable to meet her eyes. Typical. “She, uhm. Didn’t like it. At all.” He explained meekly, as Moira’s eyes widened and she had to catch herself on the frame of her door. “In fact, Overwatch’s entire uhm. Research division has come out and are crying out, claiming they have ethical grievances with the paper. At least one person in Overwatch has torn it apart on the basis of…well; they’ve accused you of having fraudulent results. Other geneticists abroad have also said you’ve fudged your findings. A few people have even gone so far to accuse your work of mirroring eugenics, and others still are saying… Well, they’re saying that it was this type of ambition that got us all into the Crisis.”

Moira was unable to speak. She could practically feel herself falling apart, and furthermore, her arm, the only human test subject in the entire experiment, felt like it was additionally going to break off, and she had to grip it to hold herself together.

“And _that’s_ why the university is doing this?” She whispered, her own voice sounding foreign to herself in her creeping horror. She stepped back, catching herself on the desk, looking down at the paper in her hands. Wondering what it had done to her reputation- what she had done to her _own_ reputation.

James nodded emphatically, seemingly relieved she had picked up on the fact this wasn’t his fault. “I’m really sorry Moira. I, I don’t even know what you can do to fight this.”

She stood, and swallowing hard. “This is beyond just an inconvenience, James. This will, this will entirely destroy my reputation! If Overwatch is behind this, God, it won’t be something I’ll be able to edit and fix, and publish again. If Overwatch has condemned me, my life as a researcher, as a _scientist_ , is completely over.”

And James only nodded solemnly, hands wringing again, and Moira’s breath caught.

“How long do I have?” She asked, feeling lightheaded.

“Two weeks.” He explained, quiet. “Whatever’s left after that will be…disposed of accordingly.”

Moira rubbed her temples. “So I either try to defend myself, this one final time, or I run the risk of having myself and all of my belongings thrown out, is that correct?”

Another nod from James, and Moira let out a long groan. “Unbelievable.” She stated, unsure of what else to do. “Fine. Leave me. I’ll get this done.” She waved a hand, dismissing him, and the simpering fool ran off, tail between his legs.

She looked around the mess that had become her home over the years, and let out a long, uncertain sigh.

What on earth was she going to do now? 

XXXXX

It was a clear choice. Ultimately, the university had betrayed her, and even if she did try and clear her name…there wasn’t a guarantee it would earn her back her job or her living space. She could do that somewhere else.

Where exactly that would be was still incredibly up in the air. For now… she had boxes and boxes to go through- putting her life into containers with labels on them and feeling like she was abandoning the only thing she’d ever had to call her own.

What was absolutely certain was how Overwatch was entirely responsible for this. She refused to see their point- it wasn’t even in the same field that had started the Omnic Crisis, and she wasn’t advocating for uses! She wasn’t trying to make ethical judgments- those would be left for social scientists. Her work was very simple in that it only wanted to know if she could- and if she could, then the possibilities were limitless. She put her head into her hands, and let out a deep, put upon sigh.

Their judgment had come, though, and they’d been… absolutely damning. So she’d have to wizen up and get better, then.

She threw her goggles into another cardboard box and ordered her computer imperially to turn on her David Bowie playlist. It opened up with _Changes_ , and she felt immediately soothed, to a degree, albeit called out.  

“Unbelievable.” She sighed, stretching before she crossed her arms. “Well, Ziggy Stardust, I have approximately 5 days left.” She turned to her rabbit. “My last check from the university was written today.” She placed her robotic attachments for her explorations into tech crossovers more carefully into their bin. “And I took my last pill last night.” She folded her arms and sat down next to her rabbit’s habitat, before she put her chin in her hand. “I don’t honestly feel that different… And, therapy is expensive, as are my pills.” She reasoned, pulling the empty bottle from her pocket. “I’ve been medicated for a rather long time, haven’t I? I’m sure things have…sorted themselves out.” She fingered her empty bottle. “If something goes wrong, I can always try and get pills again. But…” She looked to her rabbit. “It’s either you or them. And of course I’m going to keep you, Ziggy Stardust.”

The adorable creature was right at the edge of its enclosure, and Moira gently scooped him out to hold on her lap, softly rubbing his fur. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll get it all sorted.” She looked up at the ceiling, before tossing the pill bottle in the trash. “I’d much rather keep you.”

Her rabbit did not answer her.

XXXXX

It took the whole of the time she was given, and even still, some things were just going to have to be left. Her robotic extensions that she had used for research when her right arm acted up were one of those things that she didn’t have any room in her small moving truck, or anywhere in an apartment to keep. Might as well let the University clean up the place for her, damn them.

She took one final look at her lab, the same one she’d worked out of for 5 years now.

For the first time in her life, she had no grand plans. She had nowhere more to travel forward. Before her lay a cliff, and behind her there was simply an uncaring sea. She was damned if she took that step forward into the abyss of the unknown, and damned to be shoved forward off the plank if she tried to dig her heels in where she was not wanted.

This place was her _home_. Even as she stared at it in it’s stark white emptiness, it was easy to remember when she’d been a recently graduated PhD and being shown in to her own, private lab. She remembered the excitement, the joy she’d felt at no longer being a student, but instead a researcher. Not someone who was to be lectured, but someone that was able to push the needle forward. To find all those things her professors hadn’t been able to answer.

Yet now there was no joy, no excitement. Her coworkers weren’t even here to say goodbye, for all the time and effort she’d devoted to this university. Instead of leaving her mark on science in the form of landmark discoveries, she’d become a stain, something to desperately be mopped up and dumped out for someone else to deal with.

Her world had been emptied, entirely, and she had no path forward. This was to be her end, and the grave had been shallowly dug, waiting for her to drop into it.

Moira had yet to even contact her mother about the whole mess; it wasn’t unlikely that the woman had heard of what all had gone on, but…Moira wasn’t ready to turn tail. While it was true, she had no immediate plans, she still was in her 30s, and she wasn’t ready to go to her mother’s home after not being there for so long.

But still…doubt nibbled at her. Overwatch and many others had dragged her name through the mud of the science community. It would be hard to come back from this, in _any_ field now.

Moira made the final turn, looking away from her life up until this point, her dreams, and walked away from it all. She approached the exit, and turned out the lights, feeling some sort of light die inside her in turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “She felt that she had been reduced to nothingness. She no longer had any physical existence to fill a space in the void.”  
> -Mansoura Ez Eldin, “Maryam’s Maze.”
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter 2 will be up next Sunday.


	3. Chapter 3

She was on the lonely roof of the University’s parking garage at sunset on the final day when something entirely unexpected occurred.

“Dr. O’Deorain.” A voice, wholly unfamiliar called out to her, and she turned, slightly, to the side, her red eye falling over a bizarre scene.

There was first and foremost a _ship_ , one that Moira definitely not heard anything about; not that she would have, seeing as not a single one of her ex coworkers had even stopped in to say so much as _goodbye_. But still, it was odd, to see it there, barely shining in the late evening sun. What on Earth was it doing there…furthermore; the strangeness didn’t really even start there. There were three men. One of whom had almost certainly called her name, and was standing in front. His presence was commanding, and the two at his side looked both to him and to her. He must have been the leader, and yet the beanie, hoodie, and jeans made a decidedly casual picture for an individual who had come here via secret plane that no one had seen arrive.

His companions were just as strange, if not more so. Both were slightly obscured from her vision, but one appeared to be an omnic at first glance, before she saw the undeniable humanity that lay just out of sight. She could just make out the human arm that was scarred and melded into the cyborg parts that made him seem less than what he was, his red eyes that she had mistaken for LEDs at first sizing her up tellingly, his sword a silent threat resting on his shoulder.

And the other was…a cowboy, with a black cape billowing in the wind. Smoking a cigar on a smoking-free campus was a bold statement, but there something in his eyes that she didn’t like.

“Dr. O’Deorain.” The man in front said again, offering her a smile and a hand. 

Her eyes widened somewhat, and she turned to face him fully. “Who are you, exactly?” She asked, flatly, staring at the logos on the ship, and their…costumes, uniforms, it seemed. The aircraft read BW-14, and the logo almost looked like…the Overwatch symbol, with some sort of skull overlain.

“Name’s Gabriel Reyes. If you could come with us, that’d be fantastic. I’d love to chat…about a potential job offer, and a chance to clear your name.” He said, tantalizing her with that final piece of information. She could feel that anxiety about her future in her throat, feel that lost grip on who she was and what she could do grip tightly back onto where it was before this whole mess unfolded.

“Alright.” She agreed. “I’ll come with you…hear you out, at least.” She swallowed, and Gabriel’s smile just widened at the hunger in her eyes for another chance.

“Good.”

XXXXX

“How many degrees do you even have, Dr. O’Deorain?” Gabriel asked, sitting in the dark room only lit by a single hanging light bulb over the metal table. He seemed genuinely curious as he sat across from her, removing his beanie as he attempted to be casual with her.

It didn’t help the fact that they were sitting in an interrogation room, and Moira couldn’t help but notice the metal loops on the table they were sitting at that were meant for attaching handcuffs to. But his demeanor was appreciated, even as her guard remained on high alert.

“I double majored in my undergraduate education, in Molecular Biology and in Biotechnology.” She started slowly, still unsure as to what this “Gabriel’s” game was. He had mentioned clearing her name, yet she was in an interrogation room. What did she have to prove? “After that, I achieved 3 masters degrees, they’re relatively easy to complete, in Cell Physiology, the Human Genome, and Genetics.” She tapped her fingers on the table, waiting as Gabriel reached beneath the table and grabbed out a briefcase, popping it open.

She paused, leaning over in an attempt to see what he pulled out of the briefcase. “Continue, I’m still listening,” Gabriel’s words made her brow furrow, but she pursed her lips, licking them as she started again.

“And, of course, I attained a PhD in genetics, researching genetics modifications for genetic therapy.” He closed the briefcase, and moved it out of the way by setting it down beneath the metal table once more. Left behind were several manila folders, all seemingly unlabeled. “…And lastly, for the drama of it all, I got an associates degree in applied Nanotechnology.”

Gabriel let out an impressed whistle, fingering through the files. “Aha,” He pulled out a curiously thick document, and placed it before her. She looked down at it, and flinched at seeing the cover of her now infamous paper, the report strewn innocuously on the table between them. He pushed it towards her.

Her name was circled in red pen, along with her previous address- the one she had only just finished exiting when this man and his strange cohorts, a cowboy and a cyborg ninja, as though out of the worst type of spy movie one could imagine. However, the way that he had clearly read her research intrigued her some. He’d underlined a good portion of the abstract, about its potential impact for those with genetic diseases. 

“You researched, tested this, and then wrote it.” He stated for clarification, eyes striking her earnestly, and Moira’s fingers traced over the document.

“Yes, I did.” She admitted, voice airy as she reminisced over her biggest achievement, for better or worse. “I must say, I never envisioned it would get me fired from my job and see me approached by a group of covert operatives.” She gestured to it. “It was simply supposed to be the starting point of my broader career, and remove me from the tedious world of academia. Human genetics has always been my passion, and specifically studying its flaws, failures, and what we could do to improve them.”

“Sounds a whole load like eugenics, to a bunch of people from other professions.” Gabriel goaded lightly, his tone purposefully questioning, as though trying to gauge her reaction- his eyebrow was raised as he watched her face carefully. “And then there’s the idea you’re pushing science too far, too fast. We did just get ourselves out of trouble, when such a fast push for advancement led to the Crisis, Dr. O’Deorain.”

Moira rubbed her temples, sighing slightly as her lips curled at the familiar accusation. “I’m not a eugenicist, in spite of critics amongst my colleagues and peers claiming otherwise.” She took her paper in her hands. “I’m not seeking to eliminate swaths of the population I don’t see fit. I never even attempt to answer what the word fit means, that's not my research.”

Gabriel nodded, resting his chin on his hand as he listened to her explanation. “Go on.” He made a circle in the air with his free hand, seeming curious as to what she had to say about this.” 

“From a physical standpoint, I am a genetic anomaly, and growing up in rural Ireland, I was considered a freak. I am all too aware of how…arbitrary the traits by which some people can divide whole populations by.” She elaborated. “I’m a scientist. Through and through. And if we are always _afraid_ of something that happened before, nothing will change.” She said, earnestly. “This is my _life’s_ work.”

Gabriel sized her up for a long moment, before he nodded carefully. “Right, well. I have use for someone with your unique talents and expertise.   There’s no one in your field with as much work experience and knowledge as you. And I’m in need of someone with that stuff, and you’re in need of a job. So…work for me.” He finished, clasping his hands on the desk, looking at her expectantly.

“This interview has been…interesting.” She said, carefully. “What all is entailed, if I decide to work for you?”

“We’re a covert ops organization.” Gabriel explained. “You’ll participate on missions, but mostly you’ll be a researcher. You’ll develop tools, weapons, and treatments for us.”

“That…does sound appealing.” Moira admitted. “Almost too good to be true. What’s the catch?”

“No real catch.” Gabriel shrugged, tapping his fingers on the files before them. “Only thing is, like all my hires it’ll all be kept top secret. You’ll move to Rome and start work immediately effective following the hire.”  He looked at her flatly. “But you need to accept the job first. Otherwise this will all get a little complicated.” He flattened out his fingers and stared her dead in the eyes.

“Fine.” Moira said, her expression furrowing her brow as she expressed distaste at the thinly veiled threat. “I accept. As you noted…I have few options now.”

“Great.” Gabriel grinned, lightening instantly. “Then, well. Welcome to Blackwatch, Dr. O’Deorain.” He held out his hand for her to shake, and she did so after a moments hesitation.

“I feel the incredible need to tell you that Blackwatch is an excruciatingly tasteless name.” Moira emphasized, leveling Gabriel Reyes- her new boss, she supposed- with unimpressed look.

Gabriel, meanwhile, was cleaning up his files and papers, and offered her a cheeky grin. “Better than the Office of Special Plans.” He shrugged, shoving them into his bag. “You are a _top_ -secret hire, so, I’ll have to show you around personally. We do not want your employment coming to light just yet.” He explained, and Moira sighed as he stood, taking the time to look around the room while Gabriel gathered up his things.

Moira was looking to the door, when Gabriel coughed. “And one last thing.” He said, pulling out a single file from his case. “Your first assignment. I need to…analyze this individuals DNA. There’s a series of problems, and unfortunately until now, there’s been no one here to figure out what exactly the issue is." 

She took the file from his outstretched hand, and he gently lowered it as her fingers traced the unassuming manila cover. “I presume this is why you’ve hired me, then.”

“Smart.” Gabriel said lowly. “I want your official report on this tomorrow. Include what the issue is, and what you could potentially do about it. Your report detailed some potential ways to manipulate DNA, and so…well. You’ll see. Report to me when you’ve finished.”

He handed her his card and a sleek black credit card. “This is the number and information to reach me by, once you’re on base. We’ll be in the process of transferring funds to this account so that you can move quickly and seamlessly to Rome, our main facility.   Our pilot, Fio will fly you back to the UK. She’ll tell you the game plan for getting you back here as well. You start the job as soon as you’re in Rome. And again, your first assignment,” He pointed to the manila folder, “Is figuring out what is wrong with that individual’s DNA, and what you could do about it.”

He put everything else back into his case, and stepped out from behind the desk. “Now. We’re both going to go outside, and McCree will take you to Fio to head out.” He walked purposefully towards the door, before he paused. “And Dr. O’Deorain.” Gabriel looked to her over his shoulder. “Should McCree, or any of the others you see ask you what’s in the file…tell them its paperwork.” He clarified, before opening the door for her to exit.

“Right.” She agreed carefully, standing, placing the folder under her arm.

Gabriel laughed, shaking his head. “That’s yes, sir, or yes, Commander, now.” He reminded, and Moira just nodded.

They stepped outside, and the cowboy from earlier stood at attention. “Commander.” He looked up, his eyes focused in on Moira.

“McCree. Meet Dr. O’Deorain. She’s our newest hire.” He left no room for argument, but Moira sensed that there was something beneath the surface as McCree held out his hand for her. 

“Right then, I’ll be working with you. I’m Commander Reyes’ right hand man. His defacto second in command.” He explained, as Moira shook his hand with her good hand. McCree glanced down to the folder beneath her arm, and then further down to the hand with its strange sickly appearance. “You gonna tell me why we need her, Commander?”

“No, McCree.” Gabriel raised his brow. “It’s confidential until stated otherwise. Careful not to question your superior officers hiring decision.” He reminded flatly, and McCree squinted, before looking away and turning dramatically.

“Right.” He grumbled. “Alright then. Follow me, Dr. O’Deorain. I’ll get you to the flight hanger.”

There was something off about his demeanor, but when she looked to Gabriel, he only shrugged and turned away, walking the other way down the hall.

She turned to follow McCree, and together they headed away from the interrogation room that had been used to interview her. However, they had only turned the corner, before McCree turned on her.

“Listen, I jus’ wanna make myself _very_ clear.” He said, pointing his finger at her. “I don’t agree with his decision. I think you’re dangerous, in more ways than one.” He explained, eyes narrow.

Moira stared back at him for a moment, temporarily shocked, before she scoffed, pushing his finger out of her face. “Duly noted, McCree.” She muttered. “It seems I should be _grateful_ that he didn’t listen to you, then.” She bit into him, and watched with some pale satisfaction that it was in fact the thing that bothered him.

“What’d he give you?” McCree asked; though his tone gave away the fact he wouldn’t be told it wasn’t any of his business.

“Hiring paperwork.” Moira fed him Gabriel’s lie, feigning boredom. “The nuts and bolts of acquiring a new employee, truly a waste of all of our times.”

McCree’s gaze remained pointed at the manila folder.

“Gabriel doesn’t _do_ hiring paperwork.” He stated flatly, rolling his eyes in disbelief before he went back to glaring accusingly at Moira. “He told you to say that, didn’t he?”

“Fine then.” Moira murmured thoughtfully. “It’s our _prenup_ , for as much as I can tell you about it. I’ve yet to even look it over. I’m sorry that he felt like he had to hide it from you, _McCree_.” She sneered, holding the file closer to her chest. “But it’s on his order I cannot tell you what it is.”

McCree’s lip curled up in his obvious distaste. “Fine.” He whipped back around. “Don’t tell me then.”

“That was the plan, McCree.” Moira crossed her arms, raising a single eyebrow.

“Let’s just get you to the fucking hanger already.” He groused, walking once more back down the hallway. Moira waited another beat, before starting to follow him once more- her past choices once more following her down and threatening her very existence.

XXXXX

The next two days were hectic. Fio, while polite, clearly was more in agreement with McCree’s opinion about her than Gabriel’s. But such was the nature of her previous choices, it seemed. It was easy enough getting her things into the plane, and she was lucky that after letting Fio play with her beloved pet, Ziggy Stardust, the younger woman had agreed to assist her beyond just acting as her ride to Rome.

Her new laboratory was spacious, and she felt a sense of calmness settle over her. She had a purpose; she had a place once more. And beyond all that, she had a curious assignment. She had, of course, since opened the manila folder that Gabriel had made her hide the contents from even his second in command. What lay inside was a disk alongside a heavily redacted note which hid everything from the Patient’s name, down to the very doctor that had allegedly handed this information off to Gabriel. 

She finally had free time, and despite how it was already rather late, she poured herself a cup of tea and inserted the disc into her new, state of the arc computer. When it finally uploaded, an amazing holographic display opened up in front of her. It was a file containing a single human’s genes, as Gabriel’s short explanation had made her believe. However, the ability to see it like this was…unparalleled. She marveled for a moment, as she was able to use her fingers to peruse the data, sliding through the familiar information.

She suddenly paused, noticing something…odd. Her finger remained frozen on the genetic code suspended in the air in the semi-tangible holograph. Moira suddenly understood what she was supposed to find in this veritable treasure chest of information. Beyond that, she could see why her… _talents_ were required.

XXXXX

“Commander Reyes.” Moira announced, dressed in her new lab coat and uniform, the Blackwatch insignia stitched into the sleeve.   “I’ve finished my preliminary analysis of the genetic code you sent me.”

“Wow.” Gabriel commented, seeming impressed as he swiveled his chair to the side, and swung his legs out from behind his desk, striding confidently towards her. “Didn’t really expect you to get it done so quickly, I looked at it and it was a massive file.”

She handed over her report carefully. “I took the liberty of…making a copy of the file itself. I figured that…this was going to be a long term project.” She informed him carefully; well aware he’d given her no such permission to do that.

Gabriel just nodded absently; opening up the folder with- was that trepidation? Moira’s brows furrowed slightly as she watched his eyes widen slightly upon reading her diagnosis.

“Dying?” He whispered with just a tinge of horror in his voice, before he looked up to her intently, brown eyes locking to hers as he took in the seriousness of it all.   “I’m _dying_ , Dr. O’Deorain?”

Moira had figured, upon examining the DNA sample, and contemplating the very covert nature of the request, that this had been the case. But that did not make it any easier to nod. “Yes.   The patient’s genetic structure- _your_ genetic structure…has several unique anomalies in it. Some of these seem to be very old, and now…they’re simply breaking down. Overtime, the genetic code will continue to…decay, for lack of a better word. It will eventually kill you.” She elaborated, before taking a long pause at the heavy silence. “I’m sorry.” She attempted to sympathize, even as Gabriel looked back through her report with disbelief.

“Is there _nothing_ we can do?” Gabriel’s voice sounded a little rougher, clearly torn up by this dark revelation.

She licked her lips, unsure of how best to go about this. “There are various things that…we could try.” Moira clarified. “But none of them are…guaranteed fixes. There’s a possibility that even attempting work on your condition might…encourage the whole thing to just fall apart.”

Gabriel seemed to be in a state of shock, and Moira couldn’t find it in her to blame him. “What are my options, then?” He asked, facial expression flat as he traced over the report with his fingertips. “I, I won’t let myself sit here and rot. I hired you because you’re the _only_ person in the whole world still looking into this type of thing.”

Moira had assumed that as well. The very nature of the anomalies in Gabriel’s code held various similarities to the work she’d done in her experiment. “Alright. Well, as I’m sure you realize, I cannot remove the anomaly. It’s been embedded in your genetic code for a long time- it essentially has completely melded with your entire genetic structure, removing it would be tantamount to killing you.”

“We’re getting close to 20 years.” Gabriel swallowed, nodding as he followed her explanation along. “Your experiments showed theoretical genetic work…but it was too good to just be theory. You had to have done it to someone else- a human.”

Moira swallowed. “Very observant Commander. You’re right. Beyond my work experimenting with lab animals, I also had a single human participant.” She removed her right glove carefully, showing him her sickly hand. “Myself.”

He gently took her hand, looking it over. “You’ve come up with treatments, then.” Gabriel stated, examining her fingernails and the way that her hand seemed… alien, the keratin of her nails turning purple and her blood vessels dark and wholly unnatural looking.

“I have. I would have to modify it very carefully, though.” She murmured. “And I would need to see…. what all that the genetic anomalies have done to you.”

“The effects started to wear off at the same time…as, well, as when I started getting sick.” He explained. “Your report came out at the same time. Everyone else reading it called you a fraud or a monster, but I knew the science like the back of my hand. It was used on me almost 20 years ago.” He let her hand go. “When it still worked, I was…faster, stronger, better at healing- I was the fastest of us all, and, well. Plain and simple, I was more than human.”

Moira’s eyes widened as she realized what had been done.   “It was an enhancement...” She murmured, putting her glove back on as she considered this new information. “You were a soldier in the Crisis. I recognized you the other day. You were the original head of Overwatch.”

“I was wondering when you’d figure that out.” He grinned, wanly.

She paced as she considered all this information together. “If that was the case…well. I would need to come up with ways to adapt my methodology for my hand onto you. It would need to be an incredibly slow process… I would need to remove the…decayed structures, and replace it with new code.” She paused and looked up at him. “But I would essentially be playing gene Jenga, one wrong move and you die.”

Gabriel made a face. “That’s comforting.” He said, sarcasm thick in his voice. “How would you replace the code?”

Moira looked to the report. “That’s the issue- its extremely risky… the only other alternative would be to try and make… supports for the code.”

“That sounds less risky.” He stated the obvious, leaning back and sitting against his desk. “What would that entail?”

“Essentially, I would be inserting new code into your genome in an attempt to support the breaking structures. We would copy parts of the existing anomalies and reinsert them.   At the very least, it would buy you time without entering new variables into the equation.”

Gabriel nodded, rubbing his hand over his face. “Yeah, yeah… that sounds…at least somewhat more reasonable than playing _genga_.”

“Funny.” Moira muttered dryly, annoyed by the pun, before she shook her head as though to clear it, regaining her professionalism. “I will work to identify what exactly the structures that are most critical are…and we will start treatment in a week. I cannot say if you will ever regain your old enhancements…but it will keep you alive.”

He let out a deep sigh of relief. “Now that’s what I like to hear.” He nodded. “Then make it so, Dr. O’Deorain.” Gesturing to the door. “Get cracking…I’ll clear some room in my schedule so that we can get this going as fast as possible.”

Moira took a moment, before she spoke again. “Commander, might I remind you that this needs to be done slowly?”

Gabriel had already turned his back to her, going to sit back down at his desk. “Call me Gabriel, doctor.” He said. “Your main assignment’s going to be me, might as well be a little more intimate given the situation.”

That took her by surprise- just days after he’d told her to call him commander. “Then please, if we’re to be on a first name basis, call me Moira.” She returned his request.

“Fine then, Gabriel and Moira when we’re in private.” He agreed amicably. “One more thing, though…this is to be kept…top secret.” He explained, carefully. “I don’t want my team knowing what’s going on. Not at least until treatment’s been proven successful or not.”

Moira stood at the doorway, her hand on the handle; the memory of McCree turning his frustration at Gabriel’s hiding this on herself still fresh in her mind. “Alright, Gabriel.” She murmured. “I’ll keep this confidential.”

“Good, good.” Gabriel nodded, sitting back down at his desk, and clasping his hands. “Thanks, then.”

“One last thing.” She had opened the door, but kept it just slightly ajar. “McCree knows something is wrong. He confronted me about…what was in the file. Accused you of lying.”

Gabriel’s face creased slightly. “I’ll deal with him. Don’t tell him anything. Until then…he’s just like anyone else here. Don’t say a word about this- I can’t have it get out until something’s being done about it. Let them think what they want about you. Your name will be cleared, with time- scouts honor.”

Moira’s eyes turned, locking onto Gabriel’s face, searching him for any tell that he was being dishonest with her, and finding none. “Alright then.”

She opened the door, and exited into the judgmental light of day once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All men are mad in some way or another, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world.”  
> Bram Stoker, Dracula


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter 3. We're getting into the thick of it now. Next sunday might not see an update, mostly because I'm in Spain and I will be moving into an apartment. It might be a few days or even up to a week late, while I work on getting my own wifi connection.

_2 YEARS LATER- 2068_  

Her employment with Blackwatch had been fruitful. She was more or less allowed to do whatever she wanted- no longer was she burdened with the strictness of going to the university board for funding. She only had to ask Gabriel, and the funds appeared. Her research in improving and developing weapons for Blackwatch was something that she was no small degree prideful of.

She was no closer to clearing her name, but she was still continuing work fixing Gabriel’s condition. They’d made noticeable progress, but the human genome was enormous- there were 3 billion base pairs in the typical human genome. That didn’t even add in the considerable number of genetic anomalies added to Gabriel’s. And although Moira was able to identify the issue- his various decaying genetic anomalies- with a quick scan, actually adding in the supports to them was dreadful, painfully delicate work.

However, today symbolized the start of a new era. She was absolutely delighted because today would be the final days of adding scaffolding to his crumbling old structures. They were growing ever closer to that moment where Gabriel would no longer be a work in progress.

“Are you ready, Gabriel?” She asked as he removed his shirt, shrugging. Moira stuck the small patches onto his body to encourage the body to take the changes and mitigate pain felt at the same time “We’ll go two at a time, we’re just filling in the final holes today…”

Gabriel swallowed, sitting patiently- the treatments had taken their toll on him, and he was just as ready as she was to be finished with them. “Alright, lets get this over with. I have mission briefings to prepare.”

Moira pulled up the DNA structure on her monitor, seeing the areas that she was going to make changes to highlighted in red. She hummed as she filled in the holes carefully with her notes open to the side of her, of what went where, noticing as she relaxed that his DNA structure had been partly consumed on the base pair below her current changes. She gently put her hand on Gabriel’s shoulder just after she started up the machine they were using to make these changes, watching the genetic structure carefully on the screen to monitor it.

She was almost sad that she had missed what had happened if she was being honest- speaking both from the scientific standpoint, and from the standpoint of helping her patient. 

She didn’t notice it, but Gabriel’s later recounting would tell her it only took seconds once she revved up the machine for him to begin feeling like something was terribly wrong, and not much longer after that for him to _see_ that things had gone completely awry.

She wouldn’t forget the first thing he said, and the horror, surprise, and sick sense of fascination that overtook her as Gabriel shouted, “ _Moira, what the hell did you do to me!”_ Before her Gabriel’s entire body seemed to be lifting away and lashing out of its mold, a living black smoke, thick and wild, jumping out of his skin.

Thus began the second phase of their treatment, as Gabriel Reyes began to fall apart in earnest.

XXXXX

“For the last time, I didn’t do it to you.” Moira defended herself as she watched Gabriel pace from where she sat against her laboratory table, calmly doing work on her arm.

More or less, she was to act as a control- someone else with considerable work done to her body…but hadn’t been apart of the unknown neither of them could control. The more Gabriel told her about the SEP, the more she could find herself in bewilderment as to his survival up until this point.

“It’s easier to blame you since it was _fine_ before.” Gabriel pointed back out, watching smoke leak off from his skin. “Fuck. I don’t know how to stop it. When I would use my abilities it was always controlled. I can’t control it now.”

“So stop trying to control it.” She commented lowly. “If you cannot, and it _is_ not stopping, then stop bothering with it. I’ll figure out how to sort this matter after I’ve finished this. Furthermore, you weren’t _fine_ ,“ she stressed that word mockingly, “The SEP was a genetic program made and run by monkeys.”

“That might be insulting to monkeys.” Gabriel tried to joke, apparently still listening to reason. “Considering…”

“Yes, yes, considering the Horizon Lunar Colony incident and the ape who now works with Overwatch.” Moira nodded, pulling her arm away from the machine. She squeezed her hand together and released it, carefully examining it. “See? No smoke, I’m not falling apart.” She held it up to Gabriel.

Gabriel groaned, stopping in his tracks. “God. Fine, fine. You’re right; I yield. It wasn’t you that did this.”

Moira sighed as she let her hand fall to Gabriel’s smoking shoulder. “I only correct you because the true nature of your situation is important for you to grasp.” She reminded. “Not because I like being right.”

“Not _just_ because you like being right.” Gabriel corrected, with a glint of mischief in his eyes in spite of all his worries. Moira’s expression twisted, and Gabriel snorted. “So what’s wrong with me, Doctor?” He asked, expecting her to have already worked out some theories. She had, of course, been thinking of them the whole time she’d been working on applying the code to her arm.

“Well, if I had to guess based off everything you’ve told me about the SEP, it’s likely we triggered another mutation… because altering mine the same way didn’t cause me to start smoking up, I would say that altering it triggered a gene that you were given in the SEP into displaying.”

“The SEP put genes in me trying to make me a walking smoldering torch.” Gabriel said, doubtfully.  

Moira resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “The SEP used a grab bag of genes made by a bunch of crack headed scientists looking for glory and finally had the ability to test everything they wanted to.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” Gabriel raised a brow, and Moira resisted the urge to curl her lip up in disgust.

“It’s _different_. In spite of having a _decently_ sized number of candidates, they only had a limited window to do those things, and so it looks like they threw everything and the kitchen sink to see what would take, more or less. That’s not science, that’s the work of madmen. You’ve not told me much about the nature of the trials, but I doubt many survived the radical changes to their structures, let alone the war at large.” She commented, taking out a syringe as she prepared to take a blood sample from Gabriel’s arm.  

“You’re not wrong.” Gabriel sighed. “What do you think happened? It’s not like they ever told us much about anything that went on.” He rubbed his neck and looked away as she rubbed at his skin through the permeating smoke. “That feels really weird, I hope you know.”

“Mmm…I imagine… those are technically your cells that are smoking off of you like that… its fascinating, really.” After tying a band around his bicep, she cleaned off the skin and tossed the wipe into the garbage.

“If you want to know my thoughts about what happened…. well, I suppose that cancer was likely extremely prevalent due to the rapid mutations encouraged by the program, but there would have been a range of things that could have gone wrong.” Moira admitted, taking out the needle, the syringe, and the variously sized tubes to be filled for further tests. “It could have caused sudden onset of diseases that act like cystic fibrosis, or breakdown of the nerves and muscles and blood, potentially causing arthritis in previously entirely healthy soldiers. At its worst, I believe it would have led to the rapid destruction of the central nervous system. At its most mild you would have symptoms like Tourette’s syndrome and lasting infertility.”

Gabriel just nodded again. “Yeah… sounds about right. Plenty of instances of good soldiers who just coughed up their own lungs and bit it. There were rumors of…trying to make zombie soldiers. They were probably just rumors; but, then again, I wasn’t much of a conspiracy theory guy back then.”

She pressed the needle into the skin, carefully watching as blood seeped into the plastic tubing. “Back then?” She muttered carefully. “Did that change?”

“Yeah, I met you.” Gabriel joked, trying to regain some sense of normalcy. “After all of this shit, mothman looks like Joe Schmoe." 

Moira switched tubes, sizing Gabriel up with a hint of annoyance. “You realize that I am the person who is working to fix you.” She reminded, raising a single eyebrow.

“Oh, I know, you’re just really easy to mess with.” He reminded, leaning back in his seat. “So, any thought about why I’m breaking down but the other survivor isn’t?”

“Good genetics.” Moira stated flatly. “It’d be easier for me to say if you would just _bring him in_.”

“Out of the question.” Gabriel shut that down, reaching for the orange juice as Moira finished her blood draw. “He’d kill me.”

“That seems like an overreaction.” Moira delicately placed the samples in cold storage. “I’m assuming it’s not because you’re already dying.”

“It’s you.” Gabriel rubbed the back of his neck. “Like I said, you’re a top secret hire. You’ve done all sorts of other stuff here so that you don’t look like you’re here fixing me. My enemies can’t know I’m sick, the head of the biggest covert ops organization on the planet can’t even be thought to have the fuckin’ sniffles or they’ll just all jump us. He wouldn’t care about you fixing me, he would have a conniption fit about the tech you’ve made and the fact your name’s on it.”

“So you didn’t tell the other survivor. Who is he, then, if I cannot meet with him for fear of inviting death? I’m assuming high level Overwatch, based off your description there.”

“The Strike Commander.” Gabriel said gravely, and Moira felt her brows raise and her lips purse with thought.

“Interesting, I could see why our work would cause problems to getting him involved then. I assume he hates me as well, then.” She tapped her fingernails on the counter of her lab, before undoing the strap around his arm. “But were you and he not friends during the crisis?”

“Do I even wanna know how you know that, Moira?” Gabriel looked up at her with stony eyes, before he caved. “Yeah, and we still _are_ , Moira. He’s just…” He waved his hands in front of him. “We both have our roles to play, and he doesn’t get mine. Unfortunately, the brass assigned this role to me. It’s…better if he doesn’t look too close into this business.”

“Easier, you mean?” Moira hummed, backing away from him. “Put your clothes back on, lets see if that can…at least _conceal_ the effects while I work on a solution for it. It might be time to at least _discuss_ it with your agents, Commander.”

At that, Gabriel looked all of his years, and stared at the floor. “I know, I know.” He put his undershirt back on, and stared at her. “It is time, I just… We were close to having it resolved, Moira. And now it’s worse, somehow.”

“Not somehow- here is my hypothesis, sit please.” Moira mumbled as she sat and pulled up her screen for Gabriel to see as she explained it. “As we were finishing up scaffolding your genetics one of the structures we were looking at decayed, bringing down some of the scaffolding with it.” Gabriel sat down across from her, and his brow creased in concern. In the depiction, one of the genes ‘slipped’, and Moira demonstrated its effect in a cell on screen. “Since the genetic material’s decay was replicated in cells throughout your body, it led to en masse death of those cells, thus the smoke. Unfortunately, or fortunately, given that this is probably what’s keeping you alive, you regenerated them as fast as they ‘smoked’ away, more or less.”

“So, I’m not fucked yet?” Gabriel clarified after holding up a hand to stop her from continuing.

Moira frowned at the language. “In essence, no, you’re not fucked yet. The yet is a much closer outcome though, Gabriel, I must warn you. We do need to get this under control, sooner than later, or your condition _will_ kill you.”

Gabriel shifted from side to side in his seat. “Right. Okay then. I have a mission, and it sounds like you have work to be doing.” He slid on his hoodie. “I need you to have a solution to the smoking in 36 hours, Moira. I have business with Overwatch that needs to get done.”

“You’re headed off to Zurich, then?” Moira sighed. “Fine, I’ll figure something out. It might not be perfect yet, but I should be able to make a prototype of something that will disguise your symptoms.”

“Great news, I knew you could do it.” Gabriel stretched before he stood. “I am in fact. I have business with Gérard, I’ve told you about him before, right?”

Moira waved a hand as she began preparing the samples she’d taken from Gabriel. “Yes, yes. Overwatch’s best, the anti-terrorist operative head who should have been yours but was sniped by Amari, and yes, the pun is always stressed to me.” She explained distractedly, barely sparing a moment to catch Gabriel looking rather put out, and smirking slightly.

Gabriel looked momentarily outraged, before he calmed down. “Hey, I see you.” He protested. “Don’t give me that look. It’s not every day I actually get to work with my once star hire. We’re headed down to Cape Town.”

“What will you do there, Commander?” Moira asked, intrigued by the sound of that. “I thought you were busy working with the Shimada problem.”

“Change of plans. Unfortunately, there have been some interesting activities lately. Gérard has his eyes on a specific organization that only seems to be gaining traction; Talon.” Gabriel smirked. “In fact, speaking of the Shimada, how about you go on a mission with Genji?”

Moira’s face scrunched up in distaste. “I’m working.” She reminded.

“Oh, I know, but didn’t you say you wanted to study him?” Gabriel goaded. “It’ll be the perfect time for you to watch him at work.”

“What’s the catch?” Moira’s voice was flat in spite of the question, as she knew there had to be one.

“McCree’s joining you to supervise.” Gabriel said mildly, to Moira’s slight frown. “Anyways. I’ll be back tomorrow for your word about if you got that prototype done- which you _will_ have, I’m sure. You leave in 48 hours time. Try to get along with Agents McCree and Shimada, they are good agents.”

“Fine.” Moira spat, displeased but unable to argue with her commander. “Tell that to Agent McCree.”

“Right, right.” Gabe waved a hand dismissively. “Now, shoo. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

XXXXX

The following weeks were both frantic, yet slow. She did get to study Genji through observation during their mission in Hanamura, but Jesse didn’t let it progress much beyond that.  They really hadn’t ever warmed up to each other, and by the time they were on the return flight to Zurich, it was a wonder that they hadn’t tried to wring each others necks out.

Genji remained as quiet as ever as they were flown into base in the shadows of the night, sneaking into the back entrance. His red eyes were fixed to Jesse’s sleeping face, and Moira sighed as she leaned back in her seat. “Will we ever be able to come in the normal way?” She asked mostly to herself, thinking Genji wouldn’t answer her.

“Not while you’re still a secret hire.” He answered, to her surprise. “That’s what McCree said, anyways.”

“It wasn’t like I _asked_ the Commander to keep me a secret.” She felt ire in her chest, her jaw moving to the side before it settled with her emotions once more.

“But he did.” Genji finished. “I couldn't figure out why either. While your records are questionable, its no worse than any other member of Blackwatch.” He said, voice surprisingly logical. “I didn’t find anything of interest in your room aside from conspicuous amounts of merchandise with Ana Amari’s face on it.”

Moira felt her throat go dry, and McCree decided to grace their presence with an insuppressible laugh that broke the tension in the ship. “Are you kidding me?” He asked, taking out a cigar and lighting it. “I never woulda pegged her as your type. Anything as your type, really.”

Genji’s eyes were fixated on McCree’s happy expression, absorbing it like a man stranded in the desert. Near instantly, she recognized that they were in similar boats.

With some hesitancy, she allowed herself to say it aloud. “Yes, I have…a small _infatuation_ with Captain Ana Amari.” The words felt wrong on her tongue.   “She’s…perfectly built for what she does. A beautifully skilled assassin- she works like…a well oiled machine.”

“Oh, hell,” McCree groaned as he fell back into his seat, looking put out. “There you go, being creepy again. Good feeling gone.”

Genji and her were silent for a moment. Moira wrung her hands out. “It’s…from the crisis, if I’m frank. I don’t know if you watched it, but there was a series on the heroes of the crisis on TV. I had a small television that I watched her on when I was 20 or so. She was quite striking.”

“I don’t know how much she’d like you.” Genji’s words cut into her like a knife. “The captain doesn't know you’re here, does she?”

“…no.” Moira said, after a long moment of nursing that wound. “Neither her nor the strike commander. At Gabriel’s wishes, not my own.”

“You’re a controversial pick. But it is strange. The commander has a track record of making controversial picks. So _why_ has he hidden you?”

McCree’s eyes were back on her, the hat only partially obscuring his face.

Moira knew she was being questioned, but she kept her cool. “You should ask our commander that.” She muttered, her tone indicating that was final. “He should have told you all already. I strongly urged him on the matter. But I will not break my silence. I don’t wish to be fired when my options are still slightly less than nil.”

There was silence in the ship for a minute. Moira resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she took out her papers. “You seem to be progressing well, Genji. The commander is well aware of how much you’ve sacrificed and continue to, and the progress you’ve made is highly indicative that you’re ready to once more take on your mission. I would see commander Reyes. I know you’ve been biting at the nib to get out of Zurich more often.”

Genji’s expression was nearly impossible to read, but she still noticed the way his eyes squinted at her. “Were you here to observe me for him?” He asked, voice flat- verging on irritated.

“No.” She shook her head. “I was here to observe you for me. Your abilities and situation are rather unique, and the integration of technology with biology…well.” She paused. “I just wanted to observe you as a case study. But I figured you should know that you _can_ ask him if you feel ready to go. Zurich _is_ rather stifling.”

They landed, and Moira wasted no time. “Go bother him about it- both of you.” She frowned. “I’m not going to tell you more. But I do think he should say something. To you especially McCree. I don’t especially enjoy being treated like I’ve killed your dog every time we have to work together.”

She walked out of transport, not looking back to check if they followed, stalking straight back to her lab to return to work.

XXXXX

While her two days had indeed found a temporary solution, Gabriel’s cells were completely renewed at such a quick rate that it didn’t hold up very long. She had had suspicions that this would happen, but that did not mean she had anticipated _when_ it would occur.

It happened not long after the news reel about Oslo came on. Moira was stationed at her lab in Zurich, still working on more permanent solutions for Gabriel, when she was called to join him in his office.

A tad irritated, she put down her work. She gathered up a few of her things, stretching. “I believe I told him that I would contact _him_ when I had finished work on our next solution.”

Moira walked in, holding her papers and testing materials close to her chest. “Gabriel, I’m afraid to say I’ve not quite resolved the issue y-.” She blinked as she took in the scene, finding Gabriel smoking in Jesse’s arms, the man clearly struggling to breathe.

Genji was standing across, his red eyes focused hard on Gabriel and Jesse as Gabriel attempted to push Jesse off him, the hand puffing into smoke as it came into contact with the physical body.

Jesse looked up at her wildly, and Gabriel’s voice was garbled in his throat, yet she still understood him completely. “Aren’t you going to do something?” Moira knelt on the floor next to them, and put her hands on Gabriel, pulling out her monitoring devices. His readings were going through the ceiling, no doubt out of panic because he was falling to pieces in front of two of his top agents.

“I haven’t finished testing our next step, but…we need a solution now.” She murmured to Gabriel. “I can give you what I’ve been working on, but…it might not work.”

“Do it.” Gabriel said with a choked voice, eyes glistening red like blood.

“McCree.” Moira stood. “Genji. Please help bring Commander Reyes to my lab. We need to put him through this therapy before this progresses any further.”

McCree seemed taken aback by all this. “Now wait a sec,” he argued, holding Gabriel against him. “This is, you’ve not finished testing it? You’re giving the Commander an experimental treatment.”

Genji looked up at McCree queerly. “McCree- now is not the time. The Commander has agreed to this.”

“That don’t make it right, Genji.” He squeezed Gabriel tighter to him.

Genji just looked at him with vacant glowing red eyes. “No. But it’s what he needs, and he’s said yes. We have to do it.” The cyborg grabbed the smoking man by his clothes, and helped him to his feet.

McCree knew what he’d tried to argue to the other individual going through Reyes’ dilemma, and so he shut up, thankfully. They walked in silence back to Moira’s office, Gabriel seeping smoke. Black ooze dripped from his mouth and nose. In spite of how much pain he was likely in, the man was surprisingly stoic as they made their quiet journey in the dead of night.

“Lay him down.” Moira instructed coolly, gesturing to her stolen table from the medical wing. Genji was what made Jesse move into action, grabbing a pillow for the commanders head to rest on. “Now step back. He usually likes some space.”

Jesse’s hands lingered on Gabriel’s, until Genji put a hand on his shoulder. The man seemed haunted by what was going on in front of him as Moira took the initial test vectors she had prepared for preliminary tests and drew them into a syringe.

“You don’t normally give me shots.” Gabriel’s eyes were wide, their centers red as he coughed up more of that strange sludge.

“I usually have had time to do more tests and thereby avoid the shots, yes.” Moira agreed. “These are the first stages of our materials, though. These vectors already have the beta test of the genetic changes I think will stabilize you.” She clarified. “I’ll do it if you want, Commander Reyes.” She waited for his word, as Jesse and Genji stood behind, dumbstruck.

Gabriel only hesitated a second longer. “Then do it.” He tensed in preparation, as Moira quickly swabbed the planned injection site, and positioned herself. The needle cleared the skin as it was just smoke, and Gabriel almost cried out as she had to pull it out, unwilling to risk losing the treatment in the smoke.

She felt his skin one more time, searching for a solid location, before she sterilized again, and rushed to inject it.

Gabriel gasped, and Moira wiped the sludge off his face with a towel, before she walked over to place the needle into her sharps container on the wall of her office.

Jesse and Genji had seen all of it. It was now clearer than ever why she was here. She just stared at them flatly as they gawked. “This doesn’t get out to anyone outside this room.” Moira filled in for Reyes. “The Commander’s orders were that it stay between him and I, but the conversation is unavoidable. This is fallout from what the Commander had done in the Crisis. I am working on solutions with him. Unfortunately, as McCree so obviously stated, as his condition was the result of an experimental program, the genetic disease formed of it requires experimental solutions.”

She nodded affirmatively as Gabriel’s vitals calmed on the screen. “I’m not upset about you being in the loop. It means more eyes on him.” She said, grimly.

“Alright, well. Our eyes are on him. And frankly, you look like shit, boss.” Jesse spoke plainly.

Gabriel spoke from the bed. “Don’t let this out of Blackwatch, and ideally, not outside of us in this room.” He coughed again, his eyes sunken, resigned. “No one else can know.”

“Like hell.” McCree’s hands were fists. “Why’s this need to be a secret?”

Moira watched passively as Gabriel searched within himself for a simple explanation. He clearly found none, and just sighed.

“It’s…” He took another pause, his false start making McCree more suspicious. “Listen. Its just classified information, same as everything else we deal in. This is just more classified than even us, even more than Dr. O’Deorain here.” He gestured, sitting up now that he was looking more solid. “What the soldier enhancement program did to me…was different than what it did to Jack.” He looked at the floor. “Made me something…different, than Jack. It’s part of why I was just happy to take this job over working as the Strike Commander. It’s…closer to Genji’s dragon than anything else here. But you knew that.”

Genji’s expression only hinted vaguely at surprise, and not for the first time, Moira wished she could see his expression.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jesse asked, eyes narrowing as Gabriel rolled his shoulders, wiping his face again.

“You’ve seen it, Jesse.” He shrugged. “I’m happy to show you again, with more details, at the shooting range if it’ll make you quit worrying. I’m getting treatment for it.” His tone was nonchalant, but still, McCree’s eyes found her, and Moira felt his glare try to burn her skin off.

“Right. Fine. I’ll join you in the shooting range.” Jesse said, before it seemed to click in his mind. “I thought you were just…fast.” His brow furrowed, and his attention shifted off of Moira for the time being. “You’re saying…that its…”

After another second, Gabriel held up his arm, and very carefully wraithed it for Jesse to see. “Yeah. I tried not to use it too much, and I’ve never completely gone to smoke before. I enjoy having a physical form.”

“Don’t we all?” McCree tried to lighten the mood with a terse, tense laugh. Gabriel’s expression didn’t change.

“It used to be very easily controlled. It’s gotten worse, I have less control of it and when I do wraith sometimes I feel like my body is just…ripping itself apart.” His hand solidified again. “I… well. I’ve never had something like that happen. But Moira and I are working on…permanent solutions. And she’s the only person in the whole damn world still looking at this.”

Jesse seemed unconvinced. “What about the SEP?”

“It was shut down after Overwatch’s inception, so almost 20 years ago. Its death rate was through the ceiling, McCree. It had to be kept top secret. Whatever remains of it is in a small hole in the Rocky Mountains. The one scientist I could track down wasn’t much help at all, either.” Gabriel’s gaze was distant. “Just was able to get my code from my sample from me, and sent me some redacted information." 

The room was silent again.

“Trust me, McCree.” Gabriel had solidified his resolve once more. “It’ll be fine. We have our jobs to do. Thanks for getting Moira.”

He stood, just as his comm went off. Gabriel pulled it out without a second thought. He cursed under his breath, and grabbed Moira’s remote for her set up, turning on the TV to the emergency line.

“REPORTS OF TERRORIST ATTACK ON OVERWATCH FACILITY IN OLSO CONFIRMED.” The taglines running off the bottom of the screen read, as a news reporter droned on in Italian about what was going on outside. Gabriel’s phone started to blare from his pocket while McCree and Genji’s comms went off as well, and the base started to come alive with noise and activity- a full-scale attack on an Overwatch facility was underway.

“Fuck.” Gabriel said, looking down at his hands again. Moira just pursed her lips, feeling that unsettling ache in her chest while her comm remained silent in her pocket. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.”  
>  -Naguib Mahfouz, Sugar Street
> 
> hope you enjoyed it! feel free to comment/criticize. I love feedback.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, perhaps not so shockingly, I found various cafés in Murcia to haunt for wifi access. Almost like I'm taking an online class and it was absolutely necessary to have WiFi or fail this weeks coursework. Real question tho: why is it pronounced wee-fee!!!!!! its bugging me so badly because I say it like how us Americans do- Why-figh) and get blank looks until I clarify with Wee-Fee. Is it really so different, or is it a joke being played on me continually.
> 
> Anyways, here's chapter 5!

“Moira.” Gabriel’s voice was flat, and it was long since after hours. Moira felt her brows crease. Especially following the attack on the Rome facility, it wasn’t unusual for him to be working, but to be here? That was what was curious. 

“What.” She turned to face him, only slightly irritated. He stood in the frame of her office with his arms folded. He was dressed in mission gear- more suspicious than curious, then.

“I need you to take part in a mission.” He said, plainly, his eyes sunken.

Moira looked him over again, more carefully. “Are you sure that’s wise, Commander? By the looks of it, you and I will be working together, but your condition is still rather unstable.” 

“It’s necessary. We spend a few days laying low in the city, and then we act.” Gabriel affirmed. “Come on. Put down the test tube and get on your gear. We have to be out of here and the transport has to be back in the same night." 

“Where are we headed, then, Commander?” Moira asked, lightly, removing her lab coat. She’d bite, if it would get her off base for a bit. She did suppose she seemed like a bit of a shut in.

Gabriel unfolded his arms, relaxing. “Venice. I can fill you in on the details once we reach transport. We have civilian gear ready for us. McCree’s grabbing Genji. It will just be us four- snatch and grab. We don’t expect more than light resistance.”

Moira perked up slightly at the name, before realizing who, precisely, would be their companions. “Oh, this will truly be a fun experience, then.” She muttered. “I can’t foresee any issues.”

“C’mon, you _still_ don't get along with them.” Gabriel explained, seeming exacerbated with her. “Don’t look me in the eyes and say that you get along fine.”

She felt her lip curl slightly, before she sighed. “Alright, Commander. Give me a moment to dress myself in my gear. Who’s the target?”

“Antonio Bartalotti.” He informed, leaning against her door frame and giving her some privacy by turning away from her. “He’s an arms dealer. He’s the one responsible for what happened in Oslo, and in our own base down in Rome.”

Her brow furrowed in distaste. “He destroyed months of research.”

“And killed 12 of my men, injuring plenty of other agents, and the Overwatch Agent who was working with me, Gérard Lacroix.” Gabriel tacked on, shaking his head as he rubbed his brow in a none too subtle gesture of his greater exasperation with her. “Anyway. Your skills will round us 3 out neatly. Let’s go.”

Moira finished dressing herself by layering her protective armor on top. “Alright. I am just going to say it for the record.” She stalked out of her room, making sharp eye contact with her Commander.

“I think that this is a bad idea.”

XXXXX

“Don’t say it.” Reyes muttered, as various Overwatch employees ushered them inside, straight into the heart of Zurich’s headquarters, as the early morning light continued to rise behind them. This was clearly where they would be debriefed. And it would undoubtedly be conducted by Overwatch.

Moira practically had to bite the tip of her tongue to prevent herself from saying the desired words: I told you so.

She had a feeling if she did, McCree would simply shoot her. And thankfully, she had some sense of self-preservation, even if they, as a unit, had seemed to lack one. They had gone and made a right mess in Venice, she was certain that civilians had photos of them from every angle, fighting Talon soldiers. The second piece was good, but…photos of her? Significantly less than. Not to mention it pulled the rug out from under them, that idea that they were untouchable and complete unknowns.

They sat down as a unit, and Moira took her hat off.

“Well…that was certainly a debacle. They’re coming now, aren’t they?” Moira murmured instead from her seat in that waiting area. Her entrance into Overwatch’s general facilities had… not gone exactly to plan.

“Can it.” McCree’s foot was tapping testily against the linoleum, his brown eyes staring, watching the door. Gabriel and Genji’s were as well- someone was coming, and she couldn’t hear them. “Ain’t gonna help us now.”

The doors opened, and in walked the looming form of the Strike Commander and his Captain. As the base had yet to even start formal operations, there could be no question that this was going to go extremely badly. That was, it would have been likely had she had any trouble reading the expressions of the Strike Commander. 

“Reyes. McCree. You two follow me. Now.”

His voice left no room, no _air_ left in the space between them to argue. Gabriel’s sunken eyes were calculating and cold. His words to her as she had pointed out one simple truth: more than anything else, the burden of this would fall on him, and likely him alone, as they’d run from the last of the assassins in their midst thrumming through her.

“ _Always has,”_ He’d said, voice not quite what she’d describe as ‘defeated’, but it was an emotion close to that. Resigned, perhaps? Gabriel certainly looked that as he and McCree stood to follow the Strike Commander, the Captain watching as they left. 

Her eyes fell to Moira, and they felt akin to how Moira imagined the eyes of a bird of prey honed in on some small mouse in a field, left alone, unguarded, too far from its hole and with the distance between it and safety ever growing.

Yet Moira was glad her eyes had found Moira’s form in that uncomfortable chair besides Genji. Moira saw, almost _felt_ the smoke rising off the Commander’s back, lashing out. She did not see his face, but knew instinctively that his eyes smoldered red like sparking embers of something that was soon to burst into flame. Side effects had eluded them on the mission, but now that there was finally calm, however tense it truly was…there was less reason for him to push through them. They weren’t in any immediate danger of dying. Not in any real sense.

“May I help you, Captain Amari?” Moira carefully prompted, the words innocent enough.  It was strange to finally be so close to her that she could practically feel the woman’s skin bristle through the silence between them. 

“When did you begin working under Commander Reyes?” The woman that made her heart pound got straight to the point, then. She did not hesitate, didn’t wait. Pointed and shot that deadly question, that bullet straight into Moira, making that wretched thing in her chest seize. Could nothing be simple?

Moira didn’t waste time- it was clear Amari was suspicious of her, and that thought alone sent…strange tremors through her from that invisible bullet hole left from her question. “Almost two years, now. I was in the process of finishing cleaning out my lab after being fired when Commander Reyes prepositioned me.”

Her sharp brown eyes felt like they were pressed daggers to her skin, already threatening to draw blood. “Did he tell you _why_ he hired you?”

“The Commander has ordered me to keep all information of my employment strictly confidential.” She had the sense to keep her tone apologetic- Captain Amari seemed irritated at having this red tape put up before her. “Even Agent McCree was to be kept, proverbially, in the dark about most of the details. I’m afraid that you will have to take this matter up with him.”

She didn’t know whether that answer was satisfactory to Amari or not- more precisely, she couldn’t tell. Her gaze was still fixed on her like a sniper’s red dot. She watched carefully as the woman seemed to weigh two options in her head. “You will have to be debriefed.” Ana switched subjects instead of pressing for more details. “Commander Reyes will be questioned at length about you. You may still be brought back in to discuss this matter.”

Her sharp eyes turned to Genji, and softened for him. Moira felt something crawl beneath her skin unpleasantly as she caught Genji’s red eyes leaving _her_ face to look evenly at the Captain.

“Agent Shimada. I’m surprised to see you here, but you have been good about getting into trouble.” She said, her arms carefully folded, voice noticeably less steely with him than it had been with her. “What do you know of her work with Commander Reyes?" 

She tensed in her seat. Her work _on_ Reyes could so easily be outed here, now. That would hardly make her look any better in this scenario.

“Why isn’t the Strike Commander asking these questions?” Genji said evenly, almost seeming like he was attempting to change the subject. Ana was surprised for a second, before the front went back up. 

“Plausible deniability,” Ana admitted, after a moment. “Her employment under Overwatch will be viewed as…” She didn’t finish, but she didn’t have to. Genji nodded evenly, understandingly. Moira felt that thing in her chest ache. “Especially combining the circumstances where there is nothing to be done but reveal _Blackwatch_ with her. Blackwatch’s discovery was already less than ideal, but her with it…well. The less the Strike Commander knows of her, the better.”

“What of myself?” Genji asked, voice cool. “Has no Shimada or other official recognized me?”

Ana’s brow furrowed. “…No.” She hesitantly answered him. “Not that we’ve seen on our feeds. The Strike Commander is more worried about Dr. O’Deorain because she’s the one who’s made international news, rather recently.”

Moira looked to Genji, and the two stared at each other in uncomfortable silence. Neither of them was quick to panic, or really, even show too much emotion. Both of them understood that emotion could be weakness in the realm of revenge. It was easier to stay quiet.

Captain Amari stood there for a moment longer, before she sighed. “I will be doing your debriefing, Dr. O’Deorain. Once the Strike Commander has finished his initial interview with Commander Reyes and Agent McCree, you and I will head to an interview room to discuss the nature of your employment as well as the mission details.”

“I just need to know: will I continue employment here?” Moira asked, voice low. She could feel Genji’s eyes narrow on her. “I have few other options, especially now that I’ve been linked to…the assassination of Antonio Bartalotti.” She elaborated, stretching a hand towards Captain Amari, swirling her fingers carefully through the air.

Captain Amari’s face was impassive. “That will be seen. As of right now, the Strike Commander has ordered that all of Blackwatch’s activities be halted for this investigation. The UN will undoubtedly have their own verdict on this matter.”

“Captain Amari.” A deep, almost irritated voice rang out, and all three of them looked up in surprise to see Gabriel Reyes’ form looming in the hallway. “You can’t be serious about Blackwatch being frozen. It surely couldn’t have escaped the public that Talon soldiers came crawling out of the woodwork the moment that we killed Antonio. That _had_ to be conclusive evidence of his ties to Talon.” 

Ana’s face was pained. “It…was.” She agreed, hesitantly. “It’s not escaped anyone that clearly he was…at least working close to Talon, if not directly with them.”

“There’s clearly a but here, Ana.” Gabriel said, face softening somewhat from its hardened debriefing mode.

“ _But,_ the Strike Commander is anticipating serious repercussions of Blackwatch’s ousting, especially considering the fact that you assassinated someone.”

“You know its not the first time we’ve had to do something like this, Ana.” Gabriel pointed out, seeming confused. 

“It’s not,” Ana agreed hesitantly, “But it's the first time you’ve been _caught_.”

Gabriel fell silent. Moira could feel Ana’s words sitting heavy in the air.   She felt McCree’s sitting on his shoulders. Reyes had been confident that killing him meant that he wouldn’t be their problem.

“In addition…pictures of the explosion in Rome have been tied to you. We had managed to keep the pictures off the serious news networks, but with the flood of reports with you, it was impossible for us to keep you all out.” She looked away. “I’m sorry Gabriel. But we’re already aware that you’ve made this morning’s front page and every headline on every major news network across the world.”

It seemed that McCree was right. 

Antonio’s blood had spilled forth and coated their once invisible forms with sticky, undeniable evidence of their existence. It would be impossible to return to the shadows.

“Captain Amari, a moment, please.” Gabriel gestured, and the two of them walked a short distance away, their voices hushed as they began to discuss the problem at hand. Ana offered Gabriel a water bottle.

Gabriel let out a calm breath of air, accepting it from her. “I’m sure that this is going to be a long morning.” He waved a hand through the air. “Jack’s busy getting McCree’s initial report of the events. I came out because I’m aware that you, Jack, and more have questions about her being my agent. I hired her because of her unique skills. No one else in the world is as knowledgeable as she is in her field.”

Ana seemed suspicious. “Jack mentioned that you should know better than anyone else _why_ she is dangerous.”

“And Jack should know better than anyone else that her work has been falsely slandered.” Gabriel explained, plaintively. “She’s not a hack, Ana. Jack should have told you that anyone claiming her results were fake was lying.”

“He mentioned something along those lines.” Ana bit her bottom lip discretely, sucking it slightly into her mouth as she thought. Watching Ana exist so close to Moira, talking so casually… _entranced_ Moira. Even while that hole from Ana’s uncaring, indifferent shot through that wretched _heart_ in her chest ached. 

Genji spoke lowly to her. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Seeing that person act around others how you want them to act towards you.” When Moira turned towards him, letting Ana and Gabriel speak privately without her eavesdropping, he was staring towards that place McCree had yet to return from. “And you can’t figure out how to get what you want."

“It seems like he’s very friendly with you.” Moira whispered back.

“He’s like that with everyone.”

“Not with me.”

Those words held still in the moment, and Genji shifted.

“I don’t know what I like more; him, or the idea of him, or whether having him would change anything. I don’t even know if having him is possible.” Genji elaborated, looking down at his hands. “From my side or his. I want him, _all_ of him. But there’s little of _me_ to possess that with.” Genji squeezed his robotic hand tightly into a fist, in hatred, in self-loathing. “I will _never_ be able to touch him as he touches me.”

Her eyes flitted to Gabriel. “I thought him and the Commander…?”

“Your guess there is as good as mine. I couldn’t tell you what their relationship is.” Genji explained, releasing his hands in defeat. “McCree does what, and _who_ , he pleases. But, his most frequent partner is Angela.” Genji’s voice was even once more.

“So you two have…?" 

Genji nodded solemnly. “A few times. Casually. On missions, mainly, where we were deployed longer than a week.” He looked down. “Nothing more than that.”

Moira could feel her lip curl. “It’s more than what I’ve had.” 

“But does it make it feel any better?” Genji asked the empty space between them. “I couldn’t say. It might even make me feel worse. For us to be so close, to be in that same… sphere as what I think I want. To touch it, taste it. Feel what it might be like. Only for me to watch him leave and feel the cold once more. To have a hit, one that’s both… good and bad. And then to be left in withdrawal." 

“Like a drug.” Moira reworded carefully.

Genji looked upwards. With his face more exposed, she could see the vulnerability there as his brow was scrunched with worry and his eyes were creased in sadness. “Exactly. And the more I have it, the more I want, _need_ more.”

“But you can’t have more.” She stared at Ana’s form in the distance. “Because you cannot get _more_. Not the way you want it. Not really.” She sucked her lips in to wet them, before looking back towards Genji, eyes hooded in resignation. “Then…we are the same. I thought what I had was enough. But with her so close…” She was lost for words, but Genji rarely needed them. 

They met each others gazes once more, and then returned to their previous silence.

“I’ll see you later, Captain Amari.” Gabriel’s voice was louder now, and the two were clearly walking back towards the chairs where Moira and Genji sat patiently for their turns. “Moira, you’re up. Exercise your judgment about…everything. You won’t get in trouble since it’s under my orders.” Gabriel looked towards Ana sternly. “Right, Captain Amari?”

Ana almost seemed to scowl, but nodded. “Commander Reyes is correct. The primary focus of this debriefing is the Venice mission, codename, ‘retribution’.” She trained her sniper’s eye on Gabriel instead. “And we will all be questioning Commander _Reyes_ about the nature of your employment under Overwatch after Gérard arrives." 

“Alright. That’s fine. I’m going back to McCree, I’d rather not see Jack kill my top agent off when they’re on the same side, for once.” Gabriel waved as he walked back with confidence down that lonely hallway.  Moira stood as Ana gestured for her to follow, and they went down a separate hallway, leaving Genji alone in the chair with his thoughts, or perhaps really, he was the one leaving that tragic island, with her still stranded without him. There was a story in myth like this feeling, somewhere, but somehow she couldn’t place herself in it.

XXXXX

She had sat at one of these tables before, but that didn’t make it any easier, to have Ana’s harsh gaze trained on her. It might be preferable for it to be the red dot of the sniper there instead. But no, there was only silence and Ana’s disapproval, heavy in the room with her, threatening to kill her.

“Commander Reyes has asked that I refrain from asking questions about your employment until a later time, after he’s discussed it with me.” Ana began, walking around her carefully, like a bird circling it’s pray in an open field. “So this will be focused on the Retribution.” She sat down. “What is your interpretation of events? How did the situation come to this point?”

Moira paused, and thought of how best to phrase this. “… It felt like the had an entire army after us.” She stressed that. “The situation was highly dangerous.   But the Commander made the tough decisions, kept us on mission, and we got the job done.” 

“But what exactly _was_ the situation?” Ana pressed her for more, slightly irritated with Moira’s placid non-answer. 

“We knew that Antonio Bartalotti was not only a highly ranked Talon leader, but also that he was responsible for attacks on Overwatch. The first attack was in Oslo, and the second on our base in Rome, leading to the deaths of 12 Blackwatch agents and the severe injury of dozens of other agents, including Agent Lacroix.”

Ana scowled at her reciting the incident perfectly, and Moira was extremely thankful that Gabriel had chewed her out about not knowing those details.

“Who killed him?” Ana asked, showing photos of the body.

Moira stared at it coldly. “Commander Reyes. Antonio had made a statement about how our venture had been pointless, and beyond that…I believe Gabriel thinks there’s a leak.” Moira explained. “He knew enough _of_ Blackwatch that Gabriel knew that our mission to take him back with us was extremely compromised.”

Ana’s face was indecipherable. However, Moira knew that this was a complication to her pre-established narrative. “That’s what you believe. Did the Commander say anything about his reasoning?”

“He said in a few different ways why he ultimately did so.” Moira shifted in her chair, the metal cool against her back. She wasn’t horribly injured, but the soreness was going to bother her. She would need to go into a clinic. “It all amounts to the same though. Antonio thought he was untouchable, and furthermore, there was nothing else we could do to him. The Commander was convinced that…killing him was the simplest solution, and the one that would get us out of there alive the easiest. Kill him, before he killed us, sort of deal.” Moira elaborated.

“It’s been called an assassination. Did he indicate that he was threatening your general safety?”

“He did ask Commander Reyes by name, of how this would look on the news. Overwatch kidnapping a respected businessman. He also said that this whole mission had been a waste of all of our times.”

“So killing him was supposed to look _better_ , right.” Ana was fringing closer to sarcasm, Moira suspected.

“It was to get us out of there.” Moira corrected. “However, Commander Reyes’ gun caused a decent amount of…well, blowback.” She sighed. “His body practically was _tossed_ out the window by the sheer force of it.”

“So you didn’t just throw him from his window, then?” Ana asked, a hint of sarcasm there. “Because when his body turned up in the harbor, well, combined with the damage to the window, that was most people’s primary suspicion.”

Moira shook her head. “No. It was a shot from Commander Reyes’ shotgun that did that. He did it without consulting any of us.” Moira paused. “McCree was particularly upset about that, but unfortunately, the breaking of the glass caused the alarms to go off, and thus the attack began. Reinforcements continually flooded in from air support and from various docks along our path. According to Agent Fio, there was so much air traffic that Venice airspace more closely resembled a war zone than a city preparing for Carnivale in a few days time.”

Ana nodded, and stood once more, grabbing a few more papers from her files. “Let’s go back. Start at the beginning. When did Reyes approach you about joining him for this mission?”

“Two days following the explosion at the Rome base.” Moira recalled easily. “I was working in my lab to the lower levels of this very base.”

“You’ve worked here, then?” Ana asked, raising a brow. “Might I ask what you’ve worked on?” She carefully pressed forward.

“With respect to Commander Reyes’ orders, I should only say that I’ve worked on projects he’s commissioned from me, as well as a few of my own ideas, under his approval.”

“So you’ve acted within his parameters.” Ana confirmed, crossing her arms, and Moira nodded. “He’s not a scientist, though. He only sees the military side of the equation. I take it you’ve made him weapons.” Ana pulled up photos from Venice, and laid them in front of her. “Including this.”

All the photos were of her, and there were comments written about her biotic grasp covering it. “What’s this technology?” Ana asked, pointing to her right arm.

Moira frowned, and lifted her right hand. “It…well, I suppose in plain terms, it could be considered a…’life steal.’” Moira carefully elaborated. “It's a weaponized version of my other technologies, based off the technology from Dr. Ziegler.” Moira saw Ana’s eyes narrow slightly. “It was only very loosely based off her work, Captain Amari.” Moira defended. “It’s primary purpose is to serve as a way to refill my reserves of biotics.” She gestured to her other hand. “I was on the team to bring them home in one piece. You should know well that those three, if left to their own devices, are dangerous in both the best and the worst sense.” She allowed her own irritation with them to show.

Ana let out a sharp breath that could have been a chuckle, before she shifted, and walked away from those photos. “So you were their field medic.” Ana reworded, before she sighed. “All the photos of you participating in engagements show that your technology…that life steal…is a very _painful_ death.”

Moira’s brow furrowed. “I don’t follow, Captain.”

“They looked like they suffered.” Ana elaborated, pulling up one specific photo of Moira fighting a sniper. The sniper was on her knees, and Moira was sucking the last vestiges of life out of her.

“ _We_ would have suffered if I did not fight.” Moira murmured. “They would have taken us in for torture, and questioning. We would have made the news, but Overwatch wouldn’t ever have been able to find our bodies. I did what had to be done.” She tapped the fingers of her right hand against the table. “I didn’t think it any different than the others fighting. It often took multiple hits to down any of their men. How is my technology different than the pain of a gunshot wound, or Genji’s throwing stars?”

“Because Overwatch’s name isn’t attached to the creation of either of those weapons.” Ana explained, voice sharp. “But because you are apart of our team, our name is attached to that weapon. And that is why it’s important.”

Ana took out the photos of the Heavy Assault. “What is this, Dr. O’Deorain, in your opinion?”

Moira looked at it carefully, before she pulled together the pictures of the assassin and the sniper to place besides it. “In my opinion, these are _all_ modified humans.” She said, airily. “After fighting them several times over, Gabriel concurred. It was very similar to Gabriel’s abilities from his enhancement program.”

“The enhancement program was carefully kept under wraps, though.” Ana tapped her fingers against the photos. Her eyes lifted off the paper, and her gaze settled dead on Moira’s face. “Your paper, though, was publically published, and it had the tools to make these…unique individuals.”

Moira raised her brow. “Overwatch’s science department had people saying that my results were fraudulent.” Moira’s voice was cool, feigning surprise. “And now you come out and say that they weren’t, and beyond that, they work as I described?” Moira felt irritation coil in her stomach.

Ana’s brow furrowed, recognizing the dramatized tone of voice. “There were countless issues with your paper, Dr. O’Deorain. Fabricated results or no, it was full of dangerous ideas.”

“Dangerous _ideas_?” Moira resisted the urge to reel back in disgust. “I did _not_ make those Talon soldiers!” She argued, heated, but keeping her voice as even as she struggled with the desire to scream. “All that paper was was a _methodology_. I never argued anywhere for potential uses of it. Talon had the same amount of access to it as anyone else.”

“But Talon wouldn’t have had it, couldn’t have _used_ it, if _you_ hadn’t made it in the first place.” Moira bristled at the accusation, her traitorous heart threatening to burst, break, in her chest. Ana’s eyes were hard, and gave her nothing. “And _you_ are now a part of Overwatch.”

“The same could be said of _your_ coworker.” Moira bit, refusing to sit there and take these accusations. “Torbjörn Lindholm was _directly_ responsible for the creation and proliferation of omnics throughout the globe.” Moira glared, anger boiling in her and she was ready to lash out after all this criticism so unfairly, solely, placed on her shoulders. “Is he to blame for the actions of all those omnics that ran amok during the crisis? There will _always_ be those who say so, but Overwatch gave him employment and continued opportunities to create more, recognizing his genius in spite of all of its horrible _potential_ applications.” She jeered at the word potential.

Ana seemed taken aback by her suddenly sharpened tongue and hostile attitude, when she had so carefully maintained her façade of control and composure.”   
  
When Ana had no response, nothing she could say to her after having her own words thrown back into her face, Moira tilted her head and narrowed her eyes to slits, her hands balled tight together, her right arm aching particularly horribly.

“I was summarily _fired,_ accused of being a _hack_ that faked my results, a monster, a _Nazi,_ and worse. My name is in _ruins_ , likely permanently, and Overwatch is to _blame_ for the publics reaction to me apparently being apart of you.” She stood, and midsection throbbed from the partially healed injuries from their last encounter with an Assassin. Moira hissed, hands flying to her midsection, feeling warm wetness seeping against her. Ah. So she hadn’t been able to fully repair that damage. But she had a point to prove. “You did this partially to yourselves.” She muttered, shaking as she refocused that pain on Ana. 

Moira’s rage was not yet sated, but Captain Amari took control back of this debriefing by raising a hand. “That’s _enough_ , Dr. O’Deorain.” She firmly stopped her in her tracks, her tone leaving no room for argument.

That horrible thing hammering in her chest with the strain of all of this, she sat back down testily, feeling ready to lash out at the next given opportunity, pain amplifying her anger tangibly.

“We’ll continue your debriefing later.” Ana muttered, face unreadable, turning away after quickly gathering her materials together. “Get to the medical wing, _now_.   This isn’t over, but you need to have that looked at.” Moira resisted the urge to reel back as Ana left her in that room, leaving the door open. She felt covered in wounds, and not just from her mission. She was bleeding out, and Ana had left here there to _bleed_.

Her mouth was dry, the taste of those words bitter on her tongue.   Her hands shook as her anger subsided to her usual collected state, the emotions unable to continuously run so high.  She staggered out from her seat, hissing as her hand went back to her chest. She had been cut open by Ana, by her doing this to her, by accusing her like everyone else had. 

For so long Moira had desired a taste of what it might be like to speak with her. But she found herself in agreement with Genji.

What she thought she had wanted…was just a bad hit, and now it left her twitching and aching in the worst of ways, needing to stumble out to seek help for her unhealed injuries, and left to struggle alone with her new, deeply cut lacerations from her words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thought about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt to explain the feeling.”  
> Sheridan le Fanu, Carmilla
> 
> The halfway point- the point where it all changes, right? The Retribution, and now...finally, Moira and Ana have come face to face, and it wasn't what Moira had imagined... hm? 
> 
> As a side note, I rather like Ashe. But damn it, I'll have to alter Dyed in the Wool, the fic that takes place in the same general universe as this one, albeit during Recall era. Speaking of which, want to know more about McCree's perspective of all this, considering he's continually opposed to Moira? be on the look out for when I re-publish Cigarette Daydream, which will take place in that stretch of time oh, around.... chapters 7 and through until the end. If you want to read that sort of story anyways. 
> 
> If you just want to listen to me ramble at various intervals, you can reach out to me on twitter @harmicist.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit late as to when i usually update this, but I was a bit busy with work this week. Left too much to do today, as it happened. But that's fine- here's chapter 6... things start...falling apart, I guess I'll say ;)
> 
> those two years between retribution and Zurich must have felt like the world was coming at them too fast.

The fact of the matter was that everything changed, after the Retribution.  Moira’s employment became a widely known thing, on base, and a massive scandal to the public.  Instead of clearing her name, it irrevocably ruined it once more. 

However the most pressing matter was as such: Blackwatch was a completely suspended branch…until further notice.  They were all to be gathered up and brought to the central location as the first waves of punishment for the discovery by the general public.  Agents on missions all across the globe had been called back, and because they’d been seriously compromised, there were several cases of agents just not coming back from mission. Whether they were KIA, MIA, or AWOL was left to be seen.  They were, for now, missing bodies on base, and overfilled folders on their clogged up report folder and mailboxes. 

At least 3 countries had shut down  _ all _ Overwatch activity in their country following Blackwatch’s reveal, including, most significantly, the United Kingdom.  The blow that was the complete reversal of one of the Security Council’s support for Overwatch had long reaching and deeply reverberating impacts on the organizations innermost functions. 

There were also other reasons, the least of all being that their final recruit to Overwatch had a terrible, unfortunate accident in the month following the Retribution. A young 18 year old whose military career as an ace pilot for the RAF had been just getting off the ground when she’d gotten a once in a lifetime opportunity- to test a brand new piece of technology. 

The slipstream was something that so many people had high hopes for, and had consistently shown all the proper results at every test along the way.  Moira found it incredibly ironic that when it finally,  _ finally _ had been pushed to human trials- the whole thing had blown itself to pieces. 

There wasn’t even a body to recover, no, not even any sign of a body, with the machine itself having vanished into thin air.  It was like the young woman had simply ceased to exist.

With all the recent controversy about the fast paced nature of technology and all its potential consequences, to lose one of their best and brightest in pursuit of technological advancements had been something diametrically opposed by the people of Britain.   This was soon followed by the resignation of the previous member, unable to reconcile is support of the organization with the people of Britain. Their newly elected Prime Minister, following that will, was all but openly gleeful to completely cut off ties with the now-floundering organization. 

Commander Reyes should have received a commendation just for managing to handle all the bullshit thrown at them over that single month.  They all should, in fairness. 

She was back at yet another check up with Overwatch’s medical wing, and she truly abhorred the continual feeling of daggers being aimed at her impassive face.  Moira knew well that she was an unwelcome thorn in their sides, but she was still healing from her own injuries. Her work had kept her together for the first hours afterwards, but they all had required extensive work.  She’d been pretty brutally attacked by their assassins, Genji had received work on removing bullets and treatment from all those instances of being in close quarters and getting a blast to the side or front. McCree and Reyes had bruising from the heavy assault, and their commander in particular had taken the harshest beating. 

But that was true of the events during the Retribution, and these events taking place now.  He passed her in the medical wing, coming out from his own checkup. They made eye contact, and Moira nodded. 

His eyes seemed sunken, and while the smoke was contained, for now, she knew fully that Gabriel needed treatment, and soon.  But, there was a bigger snag in that. Following the suspension of all Blackwatch activities, her lab and office had been made completely off-limits.  She was forbidden from returning to work, and there was an active investigation going on into all of their work. They were both just lucky that Moira, the workaholic she was, had kept the files for Gabriel’s treatment and disease strictly on her person, to work whenever and wherever she was able to.

“Come see me when you’re done.”  Gabriel ordered lowly, technically off duty the same as they all were.  But it wasn’t as though Overwatch could stop them from communicating with each other.  “I have something…troubling, to discuss.”

Moira nodded discretely, eyes turning towards the opened doors, where Dr. Ziegler was staring at her flatly.  She wasn’t one for outward distaste, but her feelings were beyond…suspicion, to phrase it lightly. 

McCree was sitting across from her, his arms crossed, and his hat low.  He didn’t look up when Angela called for Moira to join her- a decisive change from how McCree and her allegedly were before, according to Genji.

Genji had taken his place at McCree’s side, coming out shortly after Gabriel. He was silent as always, just as impassive as she was.  Angela’s ranting and raving had little effect on Genji, who had shut her down flatly by pointing out that he knew very little of her role and as he and McCree had done far worse things, Moira’s place in Blackwatch only caused suspicion for how secretive Gabriel was about it. 

McCree, who should have ‘known better’, had received no such reprieve.   She had not come to his defense to Angela, to tell her that he equally disliked her: she owed him nothing in these personal squabbles, and he had never done her any such favor. 

Moira stood, walking confidently towards the office doors.  As she passed she saw from of the corner of her eye McCree’s body shift, ever so slightly closer to Genji.

The door shut behind her.  “What did Commander Reyes say to you?”  Angela asked sharply. 

“My, I thought I was here for a check-up, not an interrogation.  He simply said he’d like to talk to me when I was finished. I don’t believe we are forbidden from talking, are we, Dr. Ziegler?”  Moira kept her tone airy, and light. Irritation practically dripped from Angela Ziegler, the  _ angel _ of peace.  Was it her presence, or the way that Jesse had turned to Genji in weakness?  Either way, it made something in Moira quiver in malicious delight, deep in her core.  

Angela narrowed her eyes, and avoided the question.  “Just keep in mind that Blackwatch is on suspension.”  She firmly stated with all the flat anger that told Moira that if it could be forbidden for Gabriel to speak with her, Angela would allow it.  The doctor grasped her clipboard tighter in her hands. “Follow Nurse Hagel, he’ll see to your check up.”

And just like that, Moira was out of her sight once more, walking past and standing confidently above all these fools.  Her comment about keeping in mind that Blackwatch was off duty was curious, she thought as she let the drudgery commence, laying down while they began their treatments on her midsection, the injuries steadily healing.   

With her eyes to the ceiling she had to wonder what all that fuss was about, and how worth it was to have these capricious relationships at all.

XXXXX

With her bandages redressed, and her composure set, she walked back to her new office.  Gabriel had been able to pull a few strings, but not many. They’d inserted a secret room in the back, but without access to any money, they were quite limited on what they could do. 

That meant he was more or less without any treatments.  And that was bad news.

Gabriel was pacing when she arrived.  He was in here because he’d done this all for her, and so he had kept a copy of the key into it for personal use. 

“Yes, sir?”  She said, closing the door behind her to prevent prying eyes.  It was hard to deny the facts- Gabriel was getting worse, and there was little that Moira could do to stop it.  She could only try and slow it with what she had to work with. 

“We’re in a right pickle.”  Gabriel said, voice low. “It’s…well.  Gérard.” He seemed agitated, and he resumed his pacing.  Moira sat at her desk, sighing as she set down her new batch of antibiotics. 

“Was there another attack?”  She asked, curious. “An assassination attempt?”

“No,” Gabriel shook his head.  “Worse.”

“What could be worse?”  Moira asked, brow furrowing. “I thought that we were the naughty children, has Gérard gone traitorous?”

Gabriel shoots her a long-suffering look.  “Moira, that’s not even funny.” He takes a moment to collect himself, coughing quietly.  “No…it’s, it’s his wife.” Gabriel admitted, shaking his head once more. “His wife, Amélie.  She’s been kidnapped.” 

Moira’s brow creased.  “That is not good.” She agreed, wondering what about that, specifically, had Gabriel wound up tighter than she’d ever seen him before.  She didn’t dare ask, not particularly wanting to have that coiled spring burst into her face. 

“We’re on suspension.”  Gabriel said, anger at how helpless he was here bleeding through him.  “That’s why she was taken. We weren’t watching, and so we’ve already lost so much valuable time.  The first 48 hours are crucial, and she’s been gone for 8 now.” Gabriel looked away.

“Are we cleared for duty?”  Moira asked, voice careful, recalling what Angela had said to her. 

Gabriel turned to her once more, and he rasped, one of his eyes glowing blood red, the side of his face that had turned away from her melting drastically.  “No.” He said, and even though it wasn’t clear if it was fear at what was happening to him, or an answer to her question, as Moira sprung into action she knew in her gut that he’d answered her, and his hands went to the side of his face in panic, falling to his knees as Moira caught him, flailing wildly with her other hand to open the secret door, pulling that hidden book in her bookshelf.

The two of them stumbled together, leaning on each other as the door opened and Moira pushed Gabriel forward, getting him on the bed as grief and fear folded into the wrinkles in his face and he gasped as smoke filled his lungs.  Moira fumbled for her research, trying to give him a second dose of the earlier injection that stopped this last time. 

He was choking on his own melting, smoking form, and his fingers turned to long black claws that dug at the smoke in his throat, the form that was quickly looking less, and less, like Reyes shifting and writhing and groaning inhumanly and loudly in pain as Moira jabbed it into the first patch of stable skin she found, brow sweating as she injected it with great haste- the man was melting away in front of her. 

He gave a long heave, and went very still.  Black oozed from his eyes and his mouth and his nose and his ears, if any of those features could be called that.   He twitched, the movement inhuman. She hooked him up to her borrowed monitors, and his heartbeat was at least, steady, as was everything else.  Nothing was wrong, but everything was at the same time- she knew. He was stable, but there was no telling how long that would last.

“Gabriel?” Moira whispered, her voice uncharacteristically afraid to be alone in this den of wolves. 

Only silence greeted her, and Moira knew that suddenly, her chest seizing, that she was on borrowed time to fix this, and she was alone to do it. 

XXXXX

The bell to her office buzzed, and Moira unlocked the door, as a familiar, albeit especially grumpy face poked its way in.  Moira was pleased that she only managed to frown internally, taking a much needed break for tea in her work. 

Oftentimes, social workers and psychologists alike had lamented how the generation of children aged 0-10 at the time the crisis broke out would come to understand it, how they might come to process it.  They feared the types of adults that would grow out of those seeds fertilized with blood and rust and a struggle to survive, and none of those fears were better embodied than they were in Jesse McCree. 

“What’s wrong with Gabriel.  I need the truth, Moira.” He stated flatly, leaning against the frame and blocking her view out into the hall of their new quarters.  

Those invested in studying the human condition had debated and bemoaned over the details, and here he was, in front of her now.  He’d been only 7 years old when the crisis broke out, and he’d transformed into a soldier at the tender age of 9, or so. He was now in his late twenties, pushing thirty at this point, he had cool and calculating eyes and survival skills that beat out most modern soldiers, and had a certain wisdom beyond his years in his general demeanor.  He rarely spoke in her presence, but when he did, it was intelligent words hidden behind a garish costume- a heavy accent and the dialect that went with it that had thrown her off his trail at first. However, that had been his game, with her, and she had begrudgingly come to respect that he had beaten her hands down in that unspoken battle of will.

“Good morning to you too, Jesse.”  Moira responded dryly, stirring her tea loudly as he didn’t respond to her dispassionate pleasantry, instead standing squarely in the doorframe of her now defunct office.  She sipped it, before leaning back in her seat. “Well, isn’t it be Gabriel you should be asking?” She said, pointedly. 

Gabriel often spoke of him in the highest of terms.  Jesse was his  _ favorite _ ; she knew- but unfortunately for as much as Jesse and Gabriel got off thick as thieves…the man despised her through and through.  She supposed he had a millions reasons to dislike her, even. She imagined she was symbolic of those things that turned him into a child soldier in the first place, but she had also simply not participated in the war.  No, she had avoided service in the military, avoided because she never wished to see to that matter personally. Jesse McCree, in sharp contrast that divided them like a gaping, gory gorge, had had no choice in the matter whatsoever.  He had become an infamous weapon and Leader of Deadlock after the Crisis, and had garnered even more infamy after the fact. This was true now more than ever.

“He’s not being straight with me.” Jesse stared at her with his calculating gaze, as though he was envisioning what it’d be like to shoot her through the cerebellum.  “And you owe me a favor or ten for getting  _ you _ out in Venice.”

Shame, really.  It was true; she had once doubted his place at Gabriel’s side.  But she had wizened up since that fateful night in Venice, and so had Jesse.   And she did owe him, on a summarily professional basis. 

She pursed her lips, one fingertip swirling on the lip of her teacup.  “True.” She said in a thoughtful voice. “Wouldn’t your beloved Ziegler dislike you attempting to breach doctor-patient confidentiality?”  She asked, raising an eyebrow, watching him stiffen slightly. 

“She doesn't like a lot about this whole mess.  I don’t think I can get worse off in her eyes right now.” He pointed out, and Moira nodded, understanding well his general precarious situation with Angela, following everything.

“Yes, I’m well aware of her acute distaste for me and how your simple knowledge of my presence bleeds into your relationship with her.”  Moira set down the teacup altogether. “Well, I am personally surprised he’s  _ still  _ not elaborated on the full severity of it to you, you are the  _ apple _ of his eye.”

Jesse scrunched up his face, disliking her terminology for their complex relationship.  “Cut it Moira. What’s happening to him?”

“Could you be more  _ specific _ , Jesse?”  She finally allowed, sighing carefully as she rubbed her temples.  It wasn’t like there was any particular reason to hide this, considering that Gabriel was far from a position to punish her for this.  Furthermore, if she needed to sneak and grab something…well. It wasn't remiss for her to use someone like Jesse for her purposes. 

He shifted from side to side, thinking of how best to phrase it, caught off guard himself when she allowed the question, for once.  This was her favor- for getting her out in one piece. Jesse rubbed his hands against themselves, and then folded his arms as he leaned into the bookshelf beside him.  “He’s not let me see him in two days now. S’ not like him, I know we’re off duty on suspension, but… s’ not right.” 

Had it been two days?  The number surprised Moira as well, and that clearly showed on her face as Jesse’s eyes glued themselves to the expression.

“Moira.  You did something.”  He said, hand going to Peacekeeper tellingly.  “Where’s Gabriel?”

 

“I did  _ not _ .” She argued exasperatedly. “Oh, Jesse, you courageous Cowboy.  No, I have been busy working, I hadn’t realized that much time had passed.”  She said, before she looked down. “It’s his condition, the thing that he hired me for, Jesse.” She elaborated carefully.  “It’s…well, taken a bit of a downhill turn.”

Jesse’s face looked a bit alarmed, but at least his hand went down to his side again. 

“Please be civil, Jesse.  I would never  _ try _ to hurt Gabriel.”  She defended herself, looking to her desk.  “Unfortunately, because operations are completely suspended, the well of funds I had to request equipment and medications for him has run dry.  I cannot access our treatments, as Rome was destroyed…and on top of that, I can’t go digging through Blackwatch’s records to make them once more, let alone actually get access to a fully equipped lab.”

“So take him to Angela.”  Jesse pleaded quietly.

Moira pursed her lips.  “Jesse, it’s not that bad  _ yet _ .” She reminded.  “If he was  _ dying _ and I was still in a position like this, I already would have informed you, one, and two would have already swallowed my pride.  Furthermore, I doubt she’d even know where to start, even with all of my experience and expertise, I’ve struggled for a place to begin.”  She bit the bullet some, and stood up, grabbed her teacup before gesturing for Jesse to follow her. 

He finally dropped his guard, giving her a curious look when she gestured him inside her bedroom.  Moira tapped against the bookcase, pulled out another book, and revealed the door to the room over. 

“You mentioned he hadn’t been answering you, well, I believe this would be why.”  She gestured to his bed, where a swirling mass of black smoke twitched unnaturally into the shape of a person, letting Gabriel’s sweaty form solidify briefly, black sludge coating his chin.  It didn’t even last long enough for him to finish coughing before he was smoke once more.

Jesse’s eyes were wide, scared.  “ _ That’s  _ his condition,” He asked; his voice low, in what was more a statement of fact than a question.

Moira nodded, staring at the volatile form with exhaustion.  “Yes. Without everything that Blackwatch had given us to work with, he’s gotten progressively more unstable.  This happened, the other day in my office, we were speaking and he melted in front of me as he was telling me of Miss Lacroix’s kidnapping.”  She sipped her tea. “Unfortunately, in spite of my efforts over apparently the past two days, he’s not seen much change. I have a few more…drastic ideas, but I’d prefer if they were last resorts.”

Jesse was slack jawed, turning from her to Gabriel and back again.  “Moira. How are you going to, how are we, Moira,  _ what  _ are we going to do without our commander?”

She gave him a flat stare, holding her tea closer to her chest, tapping the outside of the glass with her fingers before she turned away.  “The same thing we’d be doing  _ with _ our commander, McCree.  Sit on our hands and try not to do so much as twiddle our thumbs or sniffle our noses.  Hence why he was in such an agitated state, given that the wife of a longtime friend and coworker is  _ missing _ because we cannot so much as  _ observe _ the camera footage of when she was kidnapped, and now, apparently, the 48 hour window is completely gone.  She’s more likely to be found dead than not now, isn’t she?”

McCree’s fists bunched up at the unpleasant reminder, but Moira only shook her head.  “It’s unfortunate to say, but in both cases, there’s nothing for us to do but to wait for time to tell, on both cases behalves.  We cannot do anything for Mrs. Lacroix, and I can only keep him stable, and hope the opportunity for more arises.”

Silence reigned between them for a long, sobering moment, as Gabriel’s form twitched and gasped for relief that she could not grant him. 

“Did you mean what you said?  About going to Angela if things…well, if they were gonna involve him dying?”

Moira nodded carefully, stirring her tea again, frowning because she…felt something off about all this. “Yes, McCree.  Don’t worry; I’m just as keen as you are on keeping him alive and well. If that means swallowing my pride and taking this case to the one woman here who hates me more than anyone else, well.”  She gave a small shrug, watching McCree’s eyes widen at the excessively casual gesture. “But yes, he’s not ignoring you, he’s sick, and doing a terrible job at resting.”

“That’s Blackwatch for you.”  Jesse stated with something that was almost a laugh. The whole thing was too grim for either of them to do much but stand there, and Jesse eventually approached the bed.  “I’ll…hold down the fort, much as I can.” He told Gabriel’s unresponsive form in a low voice. “Get better, Gabe.”

He grabbed the hand, as it had reformed, and squeezed, leaning over to say something else to the man’s now-still form below him. 

Moira squeezed her sickly right hand that was suffering from some type of nervous energy, but then watched as Gabriel’s did the same, the rest of his body staying still for the moment.  She looked down at it, and rubbed her thumb into the meat of her forefinger, watching closely as Gabriel’s once again followed her movements to a T. 

Curious.

XXXXX

She was a week in, and Gabriel had yet to appear anything close to consciousness.  Her sickly arm was always jittering, and that meant in the middle of the night she had a hard time sleeping. 

Moira delicately walked towards the dining area, still unfamiliar with the walls of the main base in Zurich.  How queer, to finally be at this place that Gabriel promised he’d bring her one day, once her name had faded into obscurity or she had cleared it with her work.  How odd, to have to tiptoe around in the dead of night, her shame only grown. How horrible, to have to do it without Gabriel.

And yet her commander was completely out of commission, and she had yet to imagine of a solution.  They would be getting questions soon, she was sure of it. Morrison was thankfully too wrathful to even have visited Gabriel’s new office to notice that he was absent, but Blackwatch’s ranks were stirring, and she was certain that Jesse would defect to Angela if she couldn't get Gabriel upright again. 

She needed tea, and honestly, more time to solve this conundrum. 

Her arm hit the wall of its own accord, the nervous energy lashing out.  She stooped over, going to her knee as the pain from her knuckles cracking against the walls of the Zurich base threatened to overtake her.  Moira gripped at her elbow as it throbbed painfully, threatening to break apart in the same way Gabriel had. Dual eyes stared down at it, horrified and yet simultaneously so intensely curious about what on earth was happening to her- to them  _ both _ .    

Her hand was bleeding from the force of having punched the wall. She’d broken the skin- was she even strong enough to have done that?  There was a vague indent in the wall. 

It had never acted on its own before now, before what had happened to Gabriel.  Perhaps it was time to try something new with Gabriel, then. But first, she really did need her tea, the caffeine, to keep going.  Moira felt like she was being torn apart mentally by the strain of having to balance the fact her boss was essentially a vegetable and only two people, herself and Jesse, knew about it.

Moira took a moment to breathe in, and out. She stood, and continued to the kitchen, keeping her outer disposition calm to avoid wandering eyes and irritating questions. Not that anyone would ask her about it if they noticed.

She was viewed with suspicion at best, and outward distaste at best.  It wasn’t the best of feelings, and the only person who was even remotely on her side was out of commission and relying on her to resolve it. 

Failure wasn’t an option, she thought to herself as she turned the corner, and entered the quiet room.  The best thing about her habit of burning the midnight oil was that, typically speaking, no one else was around to see what it was see was doing. 

Tonight was different, it seemed, as she turned around from setting her pot on to boil to spot a shorter woman staring owlishly at her

“You’re up late.”  Captain Amari stated, voice clearly expressing the shock that wasn’t quite reaching her face.  It was clear that she was suspicious about her late hours given that she was on suspension.

Moira felt irritation coil in her, but she released it with a mental flick of the wrist.

“Habits are hard to break,” Moira said with an airy ease she didn’t feel. 

Her hawkish eyes looked towards the pot of tea on to boil.  “That won’t help you any, you know,” Ana murmured, eyes narrow. 

“Who said I was looking to go to sleep?”  Moira murmured, keeping her water on to boil.  “I rather like the quiet of the base at night, even if my hands remain…idle.”  She explained. 

Ana folded her arms, but simply grabbed out her own cup and tea from the cabinet.  “Mind if I take some water from you?” She asked, voice noticeably less…hostile. Moira was intensely suspicious, but attempted to seem as nonplussed as she could manage. 

“Yes, it’d be silly to turn on two separate pots of water for tea.”  Moira agreed, now even more suspect of the nature of why Ana seemed to have left her aggression behind, when just a month and some days ago, they had exchanged rather harsh words.  “Can I help you, Captain?” Moira got directly to the point. 

If the gesture had been any larger, Moira would have called it a flinch, but Ana simply gestured to the room.  “Gabriel did clear up some things.” She explained, hesitantly. “And after a few discussions with…Torbjörn, I have come to realize that I was acting…rather hypocritical.  I’m not the only one, but, if Gabriel trusts you, perhaps we should trust his judgment. We are all on the same side, after all.”

“The strike commander doesn’t share your opinion.”  Moira pointed out, admittedly feeling a bit…tense under her gaze. 

Ana mused on that for a moment, “The strike commander is blinded by his anger at more than one thing.”

“It’s had negative consequences,” Moira muttered, thoughts on that form trembling in her room, as she heard the tea kettle begin to rattle against the stovetop. 

“Commander Reyes has informed you of Mrs. Lacroix’s kidnapping, then?”  Ana assumed, and Moira didn’t correct her. Ana sighed. “We’ve yet to find her.”  She admitted, looking out the kitchen window. “And our only lead is that Talon’s taken her.  Jack wasn’t the one behind Gabriel’s being locked out of the investigation,” Ana informed, “It was actually the UN.  The strike commander is on thin ice, and so is Commander Reyes. Our new  _ director _ had everything to do with this.”  Ana sighed, sitting down at the counter, pulling the bar chair up with her. 

Moira was a tad surprised.  “There’s a new director?” She asked, curious.   “I thought the Strike Commander was more or less free to act as he pleased?”

Ana shook her head, her brow furrowed.  “Not quite. In order to reassure the public that Overwatch wasn’t…acting wildly, we agreed to new forms of Oversight.  Director Petras is supposed to be our eyes, but it was his opinion that it’d be better to keep Reyes and Blackwatch as a whole out of the public eye as they remain suspended.”

Moira shook her head.  “There’s no one better to find her than Blackwatch.”  She attempted to reason. “Our equipment, our tools…” She left off, attempting to see if it was possible that Ana would give her access to anything from her old lab. 

“I’m aware.” Ana murmured, shaking her head.  “There’s nothing I can do.” The teakettle boiled, and Ana poured water into both their cups. Moira thanked her absently, watching listlessly as the black tea bag’s color seeped out into her cup, the sugar at the bottom of the cup melting and vanishing into that warmth.

“Where is Commander Reyes, anyway?”  Ana asked, breaking the silence almost conversationally, but the look in her eyes expressed some worry.  Moira knew what she was thinking.

“He’s not on mission, if that’s what you’re asking,” Moira sighed.  “I’m unsure.” She lied, her hesitance ideally not being read as such.  “He was frustrated that his hands were tied, but we’ve not spoken since.”  That was the truth. “Jesse would know better than I, and you likely know that he’s likely stalking the practice range.”

“That’s not quite the impression I got.”  Ana said enigmatically. “But…alright.” She stirred her tea, the metal spoon rattling against the porcelain the only noise in the room. 

Moira hesitated for a moment. “He’s on base, if nothing else.”  She admitted. “I don’t know what it is exactly he’s doing, but…he’s not involving himself in the mission against orders, that I know for certain.”  She attempted to set Ana’s mind at ease. 

Ana breathed a sigh of relief.  “Alright- I believe you on that.” She gestured.  “I have work to be doing- someone has to continue the investigation, and…well.  I’m assuming you have your own things to be doing.”

Moira nodded, hands gripping to her mug, nervous.  Ana’s eyes focused on her hand, strangely. “What happened there?”  She asked, setting her cup down and looking the skin over, taking Moira’s hand into her own and setting Moira’s mug down on the counter.  Moira all but froze as the woman entered her personal space, and all of her felt electrified as Ana tsked in disapproval at the damage to her hands. 

Without prompting, the woman took out bandages from her kit, and wrapped them around the skin, making Moira’s hair stand on end. 

“Next time you punch someone, be more careful.”  Ana chastised lightly. “I won’t ask who, because if you’ve gotten away with it they likely asked for it.  But you will break your knuckles like this, easy. You’re no fighter, are you?”

Moira was flush at the close contact, and she stammered, unsure of how to respond.  Ana just laughed, shaking her head as she let Moira’s hand drop. The woman picked her teacup back up, and placed Moira’s back into her hanging hands. Ana shook her head, wondering aloud in a quiet murmur, questioning who of all people caused  _ Moira _ to finally lose her patience and had punched.

Moira was left standing there in the dark, and the warmth that coursed through her wasn’t just from that mug clasped tight in her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “But me, I caught a glimpse and I forgot to strike and I forgot to run and I forgot to be afraid.”  
>  Radwa Ashour, Farag 
> 
> thank you for reading! I'm always glad to hear that people are enjoying this and hopefully, you'll continue to enjoy it. let me know any critiques/comments, as always.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> buckle up- This chapter is long and dense. It's actually so big that my computer timed out the first time trying to upload it. ahah. 
> 
> Enjoy!

It was difficult saying who the following week and a half was hardest for, at least from Moira’s perspective. 

The general feeling of Overwatch was somber; as all those who were able desperately searched for the missing young woman known as Amélie Lacroix with a growing sense that it was evermore likely they were looking for a body and not a person anymore.

Those in Blackwatch, though, itched and ached with need to act.  McCree and Genji were virtually helpless and isolated as the search went on, and all Blackwatch activity remained entirely suspended.

Moira and Gabriel found themselves in her lab, and Moira desperately scrounged for any answers whatsoever.  The only thing she’d been able to quantify was that her right hand had some sort of…connection to Reyes. But apart from that, they remained in her lab, with Moira left with the lingering dread that she would have to turn to Angela Ziegler and admit, once and for all, that she had been hired to work on Gabriel Reyes. 

That would be the end of her run, she was sure of it. No one there was willing to give her the chance, she was certain. 

She was on her lonely path back towards her quarters and makeshift lab within, carrying a bag of food and water for both herself and Reyes, when she looked up, suddenly hearing a great deal of commotion. 

Amongst a crowd of men, there was a lone woman, wrapped tight in a blanket. Moira recognized Gérard from her various interviews, and he had a protective arm around her, ushering her through the halls.  Moira absently stood to the side, watching her closely.

Amélie met her gaze solidly, and for the first time in her life Moira understood the general feeling of disease that other people felt whenever they spoke with her.  There was something…deeply wrong about the way that Amélie looked at her, as though she saw through to her very core. She felt powerless to say anything as the commotion followed the pair through the hall, press and Overwatch authorities blocking off the pathway.  It was late in the evening, and though the woman seemed okay, she was also…off.

The woman was alive.  Well, Gabriel would be overjoyed, if he was conscious to hear it.  She licked her lips as she was left to the sidelines, uncertain of what exactly that…look from Amélie meant.

She turned her head once more to the now long-since gone crowd, and breathed uneasily.

How… strange.

XXXXX

It was likely not a good thing that Moira’s time seemed to pass in a nebulous way that she didn’t necessarily pay the closest attention to.  Her main focus was on her sole ally, and the fact that he was down and out. She had yet to resolve how, exactly, to fix him, but she had few other options.

Angela Ziegler remained uncalled, for the time being.  That time being was rapidly shrinking, as Gabriel Reyes remained… unstable.  Jesse had made himself known a few times, and had helped her fend off Morrison and Amari by making a somehow larger nuisance of himself.  He was still generally disagreeable about having to work with her at all. 

Every time McCree drew close, her arm ached.  Whenever she was feeling particularly frustrated, it would tense and sometimes it thrashed and acted out of its own volition. 

She was alone in Gabriel’s office, the room stale smelling and dusty, absently going through paperwork.  Jesse had shown her how to call in Gabriel as sick, and she did it now frequently. She needed to pick up his paperwork.  Idly, she fingered through the documents, ignoring the way the fingers of her right hand twitched with the motions, almost seeming to disagree with her and resist these actions. 

She finally happened upon something unique in Gabriel’s office.  It was a lone piece of mail; well hidden beneath the piles of work she had busied herself with going through as she waited for any opportunities to get Gabriel into a better-outfitted lab. 

The thing had been left unsealed- Gabriel had undoubtedly meant to mail it, the stamps had also been on the desk, but Moira didn’t particularly care to find out more about the otherwise blank outer shell- it was the correspondence within that was far more interesting, albeit concerning. 

Someone unknown, a new variable in the grand scheme of things, had been expecting a letter they’d never received.  That was never a good thing. 

She unfolded the letter with care, and opened it to find that it was no informal thing- it was a printed document.

MISSION R-5372

Status: Canceled

That was intriguing; Moira hummed as she delicately traced the printer paper. 

_ In light of the situation in Venice I’ve found it impossible to do anything about this target.  All Blackwatch activities are frozen, and even this piece of mail will be delayed until the intense scrutiny on my activities has passed. That means that as it is, this opportunity will have to be missed.  If you want it done, you’re going to have to do more to get this all off my back. _

_ I am still waiting for news regarding past files about the SEP, anything at all.  As you’re aware, I’ve sought out treatment under your advisement in the form of Dr. O’Deorain.  The only document I’ve received was not very helpful to her or myself, and as I see it, I am owed a bit more than just that for continuing to carry out these missions, especially with the severe impact it’s had on my health.  I will continue doing the work that needs to be done to keep the world safe, but I need those documents. _

_ Regards, _

_ Gabriel Reyes. _

The piece of paper all but confirmed her suspicions.  Gabriel Reyes was a complicated man, with too many pans in the oven. However, as he’d unfortunately taken a break due to this…complication, everything was burning.  Herself included. She took the liberty of perusing through more of Gabriel’s mail, and found herself a veritable collection of correspondences. All of them were more or less labeled the same, R, followed by a mission number. 

She eventually found the one that she hadn’t even realized she was looking for.  It was thicker- actually a package. So clearly the other correspondences from the unnamed individual, but it contained a second piece of paper. 

She unfolded the letter, and the paper with it, and as her eyes casually followed the text, she very quickly knew what it was she was looking at. 

From: Dr. Howell

To: Gabriel Reyes

Subject: Soldier: 24 // REAPER. 

This was the letter from Gabriel’s doctor, and it gave his condition, his powers, all that Moira had been studying and working with, a simple name. 

The Reaper.

Moira had of course, heard rumors of it.  It was a ghostly thing, carrying out assassinations and missions in the night.  Supposedly the only thing it ever left was death in its path. 

The more she thought about it, the more pieces came together.  Gabriel’s powers, and the one’s she had extracted and made her own, fit that moniker, the actions of that name well.  It moved as smoke, traveling almost in an otherworldly manner. Life was always drained from its victims, and the thought made her right arm shiver with its ever-growing hunger.

She was starting to paint a picture of a man, and she understood it better than anyone else ever could.  He was only ever doing his best, and he had suddenly been undercut by that very thing that had supported him for so long, had  _ used him _ , his talents and abilities that made him who he was. 

That was something Moira was incredibly familiar with.

With that same…general energy, though not even a quarter as forceful as before, her right hand slowly found its way to a secret drawer with knowledge Moira didn’t consciously have.  And she unlocked the trick mechanism, to discover something confirming everything at once.

A pale white mask was now in her hands, black holes empty and threatening to suck her in.  And suddenly, she began to picture a path forward. 

Gabriel was brilliant; that was certain.  But he was never quite able to think in as many steps ahead as Moira could.  They weren’t ever planning to give Gabriel more than just Band-Aid solutions.  There was likely no one in the world who could fix him, and even she had her limits- her poor reputation was the largest, now. 

They were only stringing him along until his condition deteriorated to a point he could no longer function, as he was now. He was doomed to die.

But there was a factor that none of them had ever considered. Moira herself deciding to become involved- the single human experiment of her own tests.

Her right arm crumpled the paper in her hand, as she began to formulate the beginnings of a plan. 

She was lucky that the next idea was graced directly to her inbox. 

Perhaps it wasn’t entirely intentional, but it appeared that Dr. Ziegler had CC’ed both J. Morrison, and the account she was accessing: G. Reyes.  BIOTIC RIFLE was the name, and Moira hardly hesitated to open it. Lindholm had fashioned a new weapon from Dr. Ziegler’s technology. He claimed it was only made to heal, but the thought very suddenly struck Moira.

There was something she had yet to even consider.  The biotic rifle’s design was to shoot and heal. It was to turn that thing which killed into an aid.  There was something that it used from Dr. Ziegler’s technology though, the same thing that Moira herself had used so thoughtlessly. 

She would have to hurt Gabriel to progress them any further forward.   There was no fixing him on the course they were on. It was time to stop messing about and tap directly into the nanotechnology that she used for healing and had become so closely connected with Gabriel’s disintegrating form. 

This would  _ work _ .   It had to.

White mask held tight in her hand, Moira faded from the room in an instant and made her way back down her lonely hallway.

With no time to waste, Moira opened the door to her secret compartment, where Gabriel Reyes’ body had partially solidified, as if in anticipation of what it was she was about to do.

Her right arm throbbed, and she held it absently.  “This is from you.” She murmured, understandingly, and she took her fingers and gently stroked at the skin.  “I will fix us.” She affirmed softly, before walking purposefully to her suit. She opened her Blackwatch suit’s glass container of nanomachines, and delicately reached in for a handful, watching as the moved as a live gas around her. 

She laid them out on a piece of paper, and opened up her computer monitor, before quickly getting back to work.

XXXXX

Several days more had undoubtedly passed, but Moira didn’t particularly care.  Jesse seemed to realize she had a solution underway, and thusly he stayed busier, which was better for her work anyway.  She didn’t need any prying eyes, even his.

He only came by to make sure that she wasn’t going to starve herself or Gabriel.  She was far too close to tangible success to halt her fast pace for something as mundane as a proper meal.

Her newly reprogrammed nanomachines were black; to symbolize their dual purpose, and to mark them as different than anything she’d worked on before.  She turned the white mask over, and over in her hands, because she knew what she would call this creation. She took the vial, and swirled the blackness within thoughtfully. 

Something thrummed in the back of her mind, and her arm ached tangibly, the purple nanomachines in it straining and making the joint hurt more. 

Nanomachines were such a versatile piece of technology, but there was something special about them, that she had yet to understand how to do with genetics- but something she was learning with utmost glee.

_ They could be coded _ .

They weren’t made for one thing or the other, but now that they existed, that they were in the world, as Ana had accused her work of and Torbjörn had so eloquently illustrated… they could be changed into new things.

Things meant to heal, meant to hurt.  This would likely do both. She moved to Gabriel’s mostly solidified body, and opened his mouth, eyes wide open, unwilling to miss this transformation as she had missed his last. 

The nanomachines were delicately poured in, and she released his mouth, and stepped back- the vial empty, her task complete.  The man’s twitching body stilled entirely for that one moment, and then began to rattle, and shake, black smoke rising and falling and  _ solidifying _ into something more like his wraith form than this uncontrollable mess he’d become in the fallout of Venice.

This solution wouldn’t be permanent, she knew, that dark thrum growing in the back of her mind as her arm twitched and curled with it, though she paid little attention to it. 

But it was a start.  A makeshift thing she  _ could _ work on while her lab remained so out of reach.  It would at least resolve the issue of having a body in her lab, if nothing else.

Gabriel’s body had been left to fall apart, its task complete, and thus he had been left to the wolves. 

But they had not counted on Moira knowing how to piece this person back together with the same technology that had put her so opposite to Overwatch’s darling Angela Ziegler.  They had planned for a geneticist, one to soothe Gabriel in his final days. They had not planned for someone quite so willing as she to use all the ends she had available.

Red eyes flashed open as the body lifted itself, curling itself upright, expression largely blank.

“Are you Gabriel Reyes?” Moira asked it patiently, her creation- that combination of nanotechnology and Gabriel’s continually failing systems- becoming fully solidified. 

It took a moment to answer her, blood red,  _ omnic red _ eyes trailing down its new form.  Gabriel’s hands were blackened and clawed, the edges swirling in darkness.  “I don’t think so.” It rasped moments later, looking back to her almost blankly, voice low and almost emotionless. 

This, Moira could work with. 

“Well, you’ll have to be enough of him.”  Moira stated firmly. “But, I had planned for this outcome.”  She admitted, handing him Gabriel’s white mask and mantle. 

“ _ Reaper _ .”

XXXXX

In spite of her success, there was still work to be done to complete this…thing she had made.  Her Reaper needed food, and after she’d caught him draining the remainder of the nanotech in her Blackwatch suit, she got the general idea of what the nanotechnology she’d programmed for Gabriel wanted to eat. 

That had required a very early morning stint where she trapezed her way into Overwatch’s medical facilities, stealing a handful of biotic fields from their combat stores using her fade to get in and out unseen. 

At least, she thought she had been unseen. 

Out of the darkness, an only partly familiar figure appeared. She recognized the delicate face of Amélie Lacroix, her expression…strangely flat.  The woman didn’t say anything as she approached, just waltzed forward, as though moved by something entirely otherworldly. It was as though she danced across a grand stage, the idea that this woman was acting entirely impossible to put out of her mind. 

She moved out of the way, unsure of what to make of the situation as Amélie passed by her without saying a word, the biotics heavy in the bag she’d used to smuggle things out. 

Moira was surprised as something suddenly brushed up against her hand.  She had been averting her gaze rather purposefully, but now she was forced to look up, shocked. 

Amélie smiled at her without teeth, quiet as she continued her path down the hallway, leaving Moira there with no answers and just more questions and concerns.

The slip of paper remained heavy in her hands- conspicuous and eating at her. Moira only looked once more down the hall to make certain that she was now alone. She took a moment to breathe, before she opened the slip, burning with curiosity. 

_ “We would like to see you put your true talents to the test.” _  Below, all there was a phone number.  The area code belonged to somewhere in Monaco, she realized almost without thought to it.

She pocketed the slip of paper, before she resumed her trip back to her and Gabriel’s now-shared quarters, hurrying now for the privacy of her quarters.

Her Reaper was on his feet, though there was something as off about him as there had been about Amélie. He had showered, his hair having grown out and gross from having lain there for weeks by this point.  The smell was less man-sitting-in-his-misery, and more Moira’s floral shampoo and wash.

“Do you remember me now, Reaper?”  Moira asked, and the man took a moment to blink, as though processing it all, tilting its head at her.

“Moira O’Deorain.”  It recited categorically.  “Hired by Blackwatch to work for Gabriel Reyes, on behalf of his deteriorating condition.”

“It’s unwise to refer to Gabriel Reyes in the third person.”  Moira noted absently, handing him a stolen piece of biotic technology that the mix of technology and man opened to scarf it down, hungry.  “After all, you are to act as him.”

The man gave her a ghoulish, empty stare from where he suckled on the biotic, and Moira sighed.  “To the best of your abilities.” She amended with a sigh. “It might be best to keep you out of the way until you do wake up fully.”  She muttered, fingering her comm. 

To tell Jesse or not, that was the question.  She got the feeling that he wouldn’t necessarily see this stage as… _ progress _ , when it undoubtedly was.  Moira sighed again as she decided against it. 

“What’s your plan?”  He asked, voice monotone. 

“The plan is for us to stay out of sight, and hope I get a better opportunity to work on you.”  Moira informed. The thrum in the back of her mind was giving her a headache. 

She took out the slip of paper once more as she sat down at her desk, and Reaper walked over to her.

“Who’s that from?” He asked, and her headache seemed to worsen as she went through mentally of all the little leaps and bounds she would have to go through to get anything done.

The piece of paper that she had received from Amélie haunted her, but she had no way of breaching the subject with anyone that could help her. Telling Jesse about this would lead to him, undoubtedly, snooping his way to find Gabriel like this.  Gérard was with Amélie, Ana was…a tenuous ally at best, and everyone else was similarly…an unknown. 

“From Amélie Lacroix?”  Reaper hummed, the name sounding like he was toying with the idea of it in his head, and Moira suddenly looked up at him with complete surprise. 

“I didn’t say that.”  Moira murmured, surprised, as red eyes bored into hers, that thrum in her head growing stronger as her right arm finally released its ache, that death grip on that one part of her fading as it found its new home. 

Gabriel’s voice spoke clearly in her mind, as clearly as if he’d said it aloud, despite how Moira could clearly see that he had not moved his lips.

_ ‘You didn’t have to _ .’

Moira passed out on the spot.

XXXXX

Moira woke up to pounding on the door of her office.  “Moira! Open up!” Jesse was shouting at her, the sound muffled by the door. 

Reaper was staring amusedly at her on the floor.  “What, was that the breaking point of weirdness?” He asked, tilting his head at her.  “McCree’s outside.”

“I  _ can _ hear him.”  Moira muttered, irritated, rubbing the back of her head.  She’d hit it when she’d fallen. “How long have I been out?”  She asked, and Reaper shrugged. 

“You don’t care much for the passing of time.”  It rasped, sitting on her desk. “I’ve picked your mind for…information.  You really shouldn’t fight me, it’ll be easier for both of us.” It informed.  “It seemed to be hurting you, and I’m far more useful with this information than I am without it.”

“The headache was  _ you _ ?”  Moira gave a hushed squawk of indignation, the idea that he had patrolled the sanctity of her mind a thought she was genuinely having trouble comprehending. 

“More than that, apparently.   The general misbehavior of the arm seems to all have been ‘my’ handiwork.”  Reaper stood, and offered her a hand up.

“You mean, Gabriel’s?”  Moira clarified, standing with him, dizzy. 

“You  _ did _ say I shouldn’t refer to him in third person.”  Reaper reminded, stretching and cricking his neck.  “You’ve not slept in several days. I didn’t interrupt you though the sun rose and fell, and now it’s risen again.”  It said cryptically.

“Shit.”  Moira muttered, going for her comm, and opening it to find it dead.  “No wonder he’s here, banging at my door. If I’ve been asleep for 24 hours…Christ.”  She groused, pulling herself together. “Lay down in the bed, pretend to sleep.” She ordered Reaper. 

“I don’t need to sleep.”  Reaper explained, shaking its head as though in refusal.  “I can handle McCree- we’re lovers, aren’t we? That should be easy to pretend to be.” 

Moira felt something like alarm course through her, feeling that same dark presence stretching through her,  _ literally _ picking her brains.  She forcefully shoved back against that energy, and watched as Reaper staggered backwards, to her bed, suddenly clutching  _ his _ head.

_ ‘Sleep.’ _  She focused her loud thought at the man, incensed with him, violated by the way he’d opened the door to the sanctity of her  _ mind _ and had helped himself to everything he’d been able to find.  She was only partly surprised to see his eyes roll up into his head and flop down with a loud noise. 

Moira didn’t take the time to look at herself in the mirror before going to open the door, a mistake she would not make a second time as McCree was mid-knock as she pulled the door wide open, and caught a full uninhibited view of all that was exhausted and battered down Moira.  Her hair was out of place, her clothes were rumbled, and her expression was that of a cat flushed in a toilet. 

“ _ What _ is it McCree?”  She snapped, several stages past irritable.

The man struggled for a moment, before he finally licked his lips, apparently having to choke down some misplaced laughter at her expression. “I-It’s, fuck Moira, what’d the cat drag in?”  He managed, shaking his head, muttering to himself that  _ this wasn’t funny _ .

“Gabriel’s woken up.” She informed, exhaustion winning over her, her desire to win the conversation at an all time high.  “He’s a little out of it, and still sick, so he’s asleep in my bed again, but I’ve crafted a temporary solution.” 

“That’s…” He seemed relieved.  “That’s good news, but…” He trailed off. “I’m not here about that.”  He sobered, becoming somber, and looking down, his brow creased. “It’s the Lacroix’s.  Gérard is dead and Amélie is missing, again.”

Well…she hadn’t been expecting that.

XXXXX

Once more, a certain air of somberness had taken hold over the base.  This time was different, in that the murder and kidnap had happened within their walls.  Suddenly, all the demons were within, and Moira was receiving more suspicion than ever before. 

Gérard Lacroix had been found suffocated in his bed, and Amélie Lacroix was gone all over again.  The place had been ransacked within their quarters alone, and yet the rest of the mission seemed entirely surgical. 

Whenever Gabriel was himself again, he was sure to be…entirely depressed about the situation at hand.  But he wasn’t awake. Instead there was this…thing that she had created, and continued to work on. Her Reaper- a basic AI that was able to access Gabriel’s most outermost being and personality.  However, if anything that made him all the more disturbing to her. There wasn’t any depth to him, as though he was just some 2D recreation of the man she worked under. 

She eventually told McCree that he could visit, but to understand that what this was wasn’t yet Gabriel.  She didn’t tell him that this was her creation, but it didn’t take too long for McCree to realize that something was still deeply wrong with Reyes. 

He had squeezed Gabriel’s hand, and told him to stay out of trouble, and that he’d keep doing what he knew Gabriel needed to get done.  The real work of keeping the world safe.

Reaper hadn’t necessarily understood what that all meant, but he did enjoy McCree being around.  It was likely relief from just being stuck with Moira. She continued to tinker with the personality of the nanomachines, wanting something a little less…prone to outbursts, more easily manageable.

This wasn’t who Gabriel was- something still needed to be done to fix him. 

The number on the slip burned in her pocket.

And one day, while she was alone, and Reaper was asleep in his unofficial quarters in that side room of hers, she decided to call it. 

She held up her private cellphone to her ears, as a polite voice answered her pleasantly.  “Hello, Dr. O’Deorain. We’ve been expecting your call.”

“Who is this?”  She asked, voice low, as Reaper lay asleep only 5 or so feet from her. 

“Mm, I’m afraid that discussion will have to be left until a better time.”  The voice replied, seeming to be placating. “But, I want you to know, that we here at Talon have been big fans of your work. We’ve kept a close eye on you.”  The smooth voice said. “It’s not been easy for you, but that is how we best improve ourselves.”

Moira shifted uneasily. “What is it you want, why did you have Amélie Lacroix deliver this to me?”  She asked directly, and the voice chuckled lowly.

“We want to see what you’re capable of, just as the note implies.”  The voice explains. “And we want to see it…with no more strings attached, nothing holding you back.”

That instantly appealed to her, but she was still suspicious. 

“What’s the catch?”  Moira asked, considering all her options.

The voice chuckled again.  “We can go over all of that here, in Monaco.”  The voice informed her casually. “Bring your work with you.  There is much to discuss.”

“Where am I to meet you?”  Moira’s brow was furrowed. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“We know who  _ you _ are.”  The voice simply answered.  “We will come to you once you are in the country.  I’m sure you realize that with opportunities like this, certain…acts of faith must be made first.  But, know this: you  _ will _ have the funds to continue your work in whatever direction you desire.”

Moira was silent, swallowing.  “How much will you pay me to come?”  She asked, quiet. “And how long should I be there for?”

“We will pay you a years salary for the simple trip to us, and if we like what we see…we’ll pay you another three years for the time you’ve spent with us- book a week in a hotel near the airport.”  The voice said airily. “Money is nothing. We look forward to seeing you here soon.”

“Why me?”  Moira asked, and the voice on the other end paused.  “What if I turn this down?”

The person hummed, before continuing. “We’ve already used your work, in reality. But we figured we would accomplish so much more with you at our side.  I don’t think you would  _ want _ to turn this down.”

Her throat was dry.  “You mentioned that you were Talon.”

Laughter.  “We are.”

Well.  There was the admission in so many words.  “Very bold of you to contact Gabriel Reyes’ closest worker so soon after the murder of his close friend and coworker.”  She said, trying to seem aloof.

“You wouldn’t report this,” The voice answered, seeming bored.  “Not when it would be  _ so _ easy for us to turn all of this on your head, dear doctor.  You have so few allies there who would believe you really had  _ nothing _ to do with our involvement, if we have to play our hand like that.”

Moira swallowed again, feeling like it was choking her. She didn’t say anything. 

“Come now, Dr. O’Deorain.  You’re smart enough to know what the right decision is.”  It cajoled her, before the person on the other end abruptly hung up the phone, leaving Moira with a dial tone. 

XXXXX

Of course Moira agreed to it.  Even just the idea of receiving one years salary was enough to get her started fixing Gabriel again- she could rent out space somewhere less conspicuous, and restart her research.  It would be a rainy day fund she’d be able to put to immediate, necessary use. 

The idea of getting 4 years salary for a week of work was enough to make her salivate with the idea of what she could do with it.  Four years of her salary added up to over a million dollars; it was a dream job.

She wasn’t entirely stupid, though.  She had Reaper take off time with her, and together they left base, very quietly.  Once they arrived in Monaco, late in the evening, she put on Gabriel’s mask for him, and donned her own.  Something with a bit more skin showing- she wasn’t entirely sure about all this, but she wanted to make sure that whoever it was that expected her could recognize her. 

Their hotel was discrete, and Moira made herself quite comfortable with Gabriel at her side.  The Reaper’s full outfit seemed…rather telling now that she knew it was him. She ordered a bottle of wine, and settled in for a long night of waiting to see who, exactly, was to receive her. 

It came only perhaps an hour after she’d arrived, sitting patiently and almost wondering if it would not be better for her to just go to bed and wait for more in the morning.

There was a knock at her door. 

She stood, and Reaper looked towards her as she made her way carefully over, considering all of this once again.  Gabriel wouldn’t be happy, she knew that this was… work for Talon. They’d told her as much.

But if she didn’t, Gabriel wouldn’t be around to be happy or angry with her.

She opened the door, to find an omnic, well dressed.  “Good evening, Dr. O’Deorain.” He said smoothly in a distinctly masculine,  _ French _ voice. “We’re so pleased that you’ve decided to join us here.”

“Maximilian.”  Moira placed calmly, remembering that Gabriel had mentioned this omnic before, and the omnic bowed his head. 

“You are correct.”  He nodded, face impassive.  “I came to make sure you were…willing.”  He explained, looking past her, to where Reaper sat.  “Oh, now  _ that _ is an interesting development.”  He murmured, tapping his fingers on the door.  “May I come inside?” He tilted his head slightly at her.

She got the feeling she was about to let a vampire into her abode, but simply nodded, and moved out of the way. 

“How the  _ mighty _ … have fallen.”  Maximilian almost gloated, hands clasped together against his chest as he circled around Reaper like a panther circling its prey.  Clearly, he was just as aware of who was behind the mask as she was. “If only Vialli could be here to see  _ this _ .  Alas, only the three of us were put tasked with…testing you.”

Maximilian approached Reaper directly, and with complete confidence used his hand to cup his chin, tilt his head from side to side. “We are, of course, very aware of the fact you were treating his destabilizing health, but… this is  _ unprecedented _ .”    

_ ‘I don’t like him, Moira.’ _  Reaper thought at her, and Moira put a hand on Maximilian’s shoulder. 

“Careful with Reaper.”  Moira warned. “He’s not a pet.”

“Of course not.”  Maximilian dropped his hand, looking back to her. “He’s  _ perfect _ for your resumé.  You will be bringing him, of course?”  The omnic asked, expectantly.

_ ‘I don’t want to go alone.’  _ Moira thought to Reaper, who grunted, and stood. 

Attention settled on him. “Of course I’m coming.  I’m her bodyguard.” Reaper growled. “Don’t touch me again,  _ bot _ .”

Maximilian only seemed to be delighted further by his words.  “Wonderful, absolutely stunning work, Dr. O’Deorain.” He complimented her.  “You will be  _ perfect _ for the upcoming work on our latest project, but formalities matter here, so, please come with me.”

The omnic gestured her to follow out of her room, and Moira reapplied her silver mask, Reaper sticking close to her side as her right hand man.

XXXXX

Her judges were…a strange bunch.  That was certain. 

Maximilian was to her right, staring at Reaper in his mask.  He was hardly out of place, as the other two were…relative unknowns, from her time working with Blackwatch.

Reaper was able to place the middle one as  _ Doomfist _ for her, but a different one.  His apprentice, likely, Reaper filled in using whatever he was able to access from Gabriel’s memories.  She wasn’t necessarily one to pay attention to the rise and fall of villains, and Reaper mocked her wordlessly, sending a hot rush of emotion through her chest, at calling them villains when she was about to work for them.

The one on the far left was…new.  Reaper placed the symbols on his clothes as  _ Vishkar. _  But Gabriel had never realized that they were associated with Talon.  It would likely be poor decorum to ask such a question, considering it wasn’t relevant. 

He was giving her a flat stare, and it was different from that emotionless face that Maximilian projected. 

Vishkar scientists had been among those to discredit her work. 

But that was another elephant in the room that was not to be addressed, not aloud at least.  ‘ _ He helped make my image what it is today _ .’  Moira told Reaper, who kept his gaze turned toward her.   _ ‘Vishkar, that is.  And…that means that they are who are using my discredited research _ .’

“Doctor O’Deorain.”  Doomfist stood. “We are so excited to have you here today.” He gestured calmly to her companion. “And that you’ve brought with you…a demonstration for us.”

Moira hummed.  “What is it you would have us do?”  She asked, calmly, as Reaper folded his arms in mild distaste at being called a demonstration. 

“We’re all well aware of who this man is behind the mask, and how much you must have changed him to…have him here, sitting with us.”  Doomfist smiled. “He’s yet to even level a single threat, insult against us. When before this exact persona would bring us all nightmares at the sheer sight of him dressed like this.”

“We want to see how much he’s changed.”  The Vishkar man stated plainly. “We’re going to give him a target who we’ll arrange a potential escape for, and have him assassinate him.  We’ll time Reaper’s performance. Our next project, the one we wish to involve you in, has to explicitly do with creating the most efficient killer possible.”

Moira spoke over her clasped hands, giving an enigmatic smile.  “Well…I believe that we can do that.” She agreed, turning to Reaper. 

“Let’s just get this over with.”  Reaper growled, and Moira nodded. Behind the three of her judges, various screens popped up.

“Our last employee for this position has unfortunately lost his stomach.”  Maximilian explained. “He’s done brilliant work for us, but what we’ve done to Mrs. Lacroix has pushed him over the edge.  Hence, our need to shop around for new blood.” Various pictures of genetic modification were over the board, and Moira saw how they were in various stages of degradation. 

“In addition,” Doomfist continued, fist down.  “All of the soldiers that he’s worked on and modified that have survived combat have unfortunately seen all of the various effects that those in the ill-fated SEP showed, over the years.”  He gestured to Reyes. “His condition included.”

The Vishkar employee spoke then.  “But, there is one individual who has managed to…well, more or less escape death.”  He gestured to Reaper. “And the person responsible for his continued survival is you.  Meaning, there was things you did not include in your paper that account for the way that he is alive, and you aren’t falling apart at all.”  He seemed almost displeased with this fact. 

Moira maintained her calm.  “Of course, there wasn’t a human subject in the paper.”  She agreed serenely. “That was to be kept secret, until further research was approved.”  The Vishkar employee’s eyebrow showed his irritation with a subtle twitch. 

“What are we gonna do about the old employee?” Reaper pressed, irritated that they were dancing around the real mission like this.

Doomfist gestured to him.  “Its exactly as Sanjay has described.  You are to take care of him. He’s been making plans for an escape, so…you’re to kill him.”

Reaper unfolded his arms and stood, forming his shotguns that went with his outfit at his sides.  “Who am I looking for?” He growled, as Moira stood with him. The Vishkar employee stood and handed them a file folder with images of their target. 

“I’m going with him.”  Moira smoothly assuaged.  “I’ve yet to…put his talents into practice.  We’ll get it done.”

XXXXX

The job was easy enough.  Reaper worked like perfect clockwork- a machine of her own invention.  She might have felt back had this man been someone else. But she did not.  This would further her own goal, and fix Reyes.

That was what she told herself as she accepted her next assignment, to begin examination of the dying and conduct genetic autopsies of their dead enhanced. 

That was what she told herself as she illustrated the link between her and Reyes’ powers. 

That was what she told herself as she had the Reaper do a solo mission for Talon.

That was what she told herself as she took the money.

This was a necessary evil. 

It was no more evil than what Overwatch had so willingly done to  _ her _ . What did the life of one single woman matter in the grand scheme of things?  They had silenced her out of fear of what she could make. 

 

This was  _ necessary _ , she told herself as she walked away. 

This was necessary, she thought as she instantly began seeing improvements in Gabriel’s appearance, the Reaper becoming more and more solid in their hotel rooms every night.  Her treatment plan could be restarted completely when they returned.

“We’ll be in touch with you soon, Dr. O’Deorain, about our upcoming project.  Thank you so much for your time.” Maximilian murmured, the promise left hanging in the air as his car drove off, leaving both Moira and Reaper at their hotel to pack their things up and head to the airport. 

She had no other choices.

She couldn’t have had. 

XXXXX

She and Reaper arrived home, and she caught Amari and Jesse arguing loudly with each other about Gabriel- she heard the name in loud tones.  “I’m telling you, I don’t know where he is!” Jesse shouted back, and Moira gestured for Reaper to hide in the hallway out of sight.

She approached boldly, as she couldn’t afford even to look slightly demure.  She’d come back from a stint where she worked directly with Talon. She was in on their game now; she had nowhere left to say she was wholly innocent. 

“Reyes needed a vacation.”  Moira said politely. “Captain Amari, I’m sorry for not adding more information.  It was all at Gabriel’s personal request. Not even McCree was made aware of all the details.”

“Where did you two go?”  She asked, voice careful, eyes suspicious. 

“Monaco.”  She allowed.  “He’s been cooped up and stressed out- we went to the beach.  I don’t know if McCree has filled you in on everything, and I don’t think he would like me telling you this, but he’s been…rather sick, of late.”  She explained, sighing quietly. 

Ana’s brow was furrowed, but she seemed to take that. “Reyes doesn’t typically do vacations.”  She replied, seeming suspect.

“No, but I convinced him to.”  Moira allowed, sighing quietly.  “The news of Gérard’s murder was too much for him to handle.  He’s taken it rather hard, especially since he was specifically kept out of the investigation.  Without giving you details that would break his confidentiality, I am his doctor. That’s why he’s contacted me, and that's why when I ordered him to take sick days, and to come to Monaco with me, he allowed it.  There was nothing that he could have done here, so I got him off base.”

“He’s heading to my room now.”  Moira explained. “I asked him to drop my things off for me.  I meant to find McCree, and low and behold I’ve found him. McCree, Reyes is doing much better.”  She explained calmly. “I’m sorry for not telling you about it in advance.”

That seemed to placate Amari, at least.  “Tell Reyes I want to see him.” She said, plainly, stalking off. 

McCree sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Vacation, huh?”

“I need access to Angela’s lab.”  Moira murmured, ignoring the way he seemed suspicious of her excuse.  “I have a solution prepared, I need to use her MRI machine and a few needles.  Can you get her out of there?”

“Shit.”  He whistled. “That why you were  _ actually _ gone?” 

Moira nodded quietly.  “It has worked out. You’ll ideally have him back in full tonight.”  She glanced to him. “Can you do it?”

He lit a cigar, considering it.  “You know, yeah. Sure, whatever.  If it doesn’t work you’re already well in place for Angela to take over.  I’ll get Genji to call her out, stick right with you, got it?” He said, arms crossed. 

“Let me go get Gabriel at least.”  She muttered, irritable as he once again reminded he wasn’t on her side- nobody was.  “We should do this now, as to not delay Gabriel’s meeting with Amari any longer than we have to.  I’ll meet you at Ziegler’s office.”

XXXXX

Things slid into place quickly. She had Reaper dress himself once more as Gabriel Reyes, and told him to keep quiet about their activities beyond beaching in Monaco.  She stuffed their masks in her bookshelf, before gesturing for him to follow her out.

She quickly walked him to the lab, explaining that they had to act quickly, carrying her little bag with her completed serum to once again buy him, Gabriel Reyes’ full consciousness, some time. 

When they arrived, McCree was standing, smoking, arms crossed.  “Hey Gabe, how was Monaco?”

“Bit too sunny for me.”  He groused, knowing not to go into too many details. “Moira and I wore too much clothing, she was worried we’d both get sunburns.”

“Enough chit chat,” Moira faded to the other side of the door, opening it for them.  “We have one shot at this.”

They assumed their positions, and McCree put out his cigar. 

Reaper sat patiently on an exam table while Moira prepped his arm, giving him a careful injection.  He winced for a minute, before looking to her. “I don’t feel any different, Moira.” He said, seeming unimpressed. As did McCree, who tilted his head, sizing this all up. 

“I did say I needed to use Dr. Ziegler’s MRI machine.”  She explained, huffing. “I need to check his brain activity, McCree.  It’s possible that all of this…has damaged him. I want confirmation before you call Ziegler, alright?”

“If he is ‘damaged’ I hope you know you’re taking the blame.”  Jesse muttered.

“As if there was a time I wouldn’t have.” Moira muttered below her breath.  She rolled her eyes, having Reaper lay down in the machine, covering him in the required instruments to keep him safe from radiation. 

They turned it on, and Reyes’ body slid inside. 

In truth, MRI’s are long and boring processes.  The person inside just needs to stay still, and she casually reminded Reaper of that mentally if he moved slightly.  They’re loud and noisy and McCree and herself were in another room, on the other side of the door from the machine.

But hey were maybe only halfway through it when suddenly there was a huge commotion from the inside of the room.  There was cursing- and a huge bang. Gabriel had hit his head on the inside of the machine, and Moira turned on the emergency stop, as though the person inside had had a panic attack. 

She rushed in while McCree was making sure things shut down, and the machine backed out of the hole as Gabriel groaned and cussed in pain, rubbing his forehead.  “Christ, what the fuck.” He muttered, blinking rapidly, shaking his head. “Moira?” He asked, concerned, squinting as he looked around. “Why the fuck are we in Dr. Ziegler’s office?”

Moira let out a huge sigh of relief.  “Welcome back, Commander.” She said smoothly, noticing keenly how Jesse didn’t make an appearance, and neither was he in the room when she walked Reyes out to discuss all that had happened in the privacy of her office.

XXXXX

“Undoubtedly you have questions.”  Moira admitted, standing with him in her room- pacing out of nervousness.  “The first of which that shall be answered is, well, how long you were out.  The answer is just over a month.” She explained, quiet.

“Fuck.”  His hand was over his mouth.  “That’s a really long time. How’d you hide it?” 

“McCree and I worked together to make sure that even if you were looked for, you were taking sick days or just time off in general.  If anyone was really particularly determined, well, McCree was apt at making a nuisance out of himself.”

Gabriel considered that for a long moment, before nodding.  “He is good at that. He knows, then?”

“He knows considerably more than he did before, but not everything.”  Moira agreed. “I couldn’t have done it alone, though, so I hope you’ll forgive his involvement.”

“No, I understand.”  Reyes shook his head.  “Fuck, I would have figured you would have, I dunno, taken me to Angela or just…left me.  It’s not like I’ve held up my part of the bargain any.” He said, bewildered. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that you didn’t but…damn.”  He sighed.

“I had little choice.”  Moira sighed. “You’re the only one here who trusts me in any regard.  I had to fix you, and more than that, I wanted to. You gave me my chance.” She sighed, the feelings in Gabriel’s stomach irritating hers.  “And  _ stop _ pacing.”  She ordered.

Gabriel suddenly went still.  His eyes were owlish as he stared at her helplessly, and she stared right back.  _ Sorry _ , she thoughtlessly directed at him, releasing him with a motion.

He didn’t stop staring.  “Moira, what the  _ hell _ was that?”  He asked, eyes wide as the sun itself.

Moira sighed.  “We’re…well. In  _ essence _ , we’ve become…connected, let’s call it that.”  She waved a hand. “I don’t understand it either.  It wasn’t until  _ you _ pointed it out to me that I…”

“Wait, I wasn’t conscious.”  Gabriel stated dumbly, and Moira rubbed her forehead. 

“Right, but I was…well.  I needed to make progress on you.”  She explained. “I used my nanotechnology and well.  Programmed something surface level to keep you from worsening any further.”  She explained and he seemed aghast at the thought. 

“What the hell?”  He said, eyes wide.  “What the fuck else did you do with me?”

“Had you shower,” She rolled her eyes.  “That type of thing. It wasn’t like you were a puppet obeying orders; it just eased up pressure on me.  You were able to make brief appearances at least. But you were definitely not yourself, either.”

“Can I  _ feel _ what you’re feeling?”  Gabriel asked, confused.  “Because I’m reading a lot more irritation from you than I usually ever do.”

“To an extent.”  Moira agreed. “Whatever the hell we are isn’t an exact science, and again, it was certainly  _ not _ my intention to just let you have uninhibited access to my head.”

Gabriel snorted.  “Yeah, alright. I’ll keep it in mind you’re just as uneasy about this as I am.”

Gabriel restarted his slow pace. “So, a month.  That’s a lot of time.” He murmured. “Was Amélie found?  I know Gérard likely came looking for me.”

“Ah.”  She realized that…well; she would have to explain it all to him at some point.  Guilt filled her mind, and Gabriel looked to her uneasily. “Well.”

“Moira…what happened?”  He asked, suspicious. 

She licked her lips.  “Amélie was found.” Moira explained.  “But…well. She’s gone, now. And Gérard is dead.”  Her guilt was…powerful in her stomach, as she knew that she had worked _ with _ the ones responsible now.  It was time for Reyes’ response.

“Moira, what did you do?”  Reyes slammed her against the wall of her bookshelf, and she felt it shake behind her.  Her lip curled upwards at the harsh contact, and she slipped from his grasp by airily fading to the opposite side of the room, reappearing and taking a single step further as a statement.

She had expected this, but she was still…put upon by the reaction to the guilty conscience he could undoubtedly feel and the picture in her mind’s eye of Talon.

“Calm yourself.  I did  _ nothing _ .”  She emphasized, patting down her front with indignation.  “All that happened was that I received a strange note from Lacroix with a phone number on it and a strange note asking if I wanted to  _ test my strengths _ , that was all.”

Gabriel paced faster, disliking the whole thing. “And you chose not to tell me?”  He shouted, illogically.

“I did, in fact.   _ You _ were  _ unavailable _ .”  Moira dryly reminded, and Gabriel groaned in frustration, black smoke pouring out of his mouth, making him cough and gag when it undoubtedly irritated his throat.  “I didn’t call it until you continued to be unavailable and Gérard was found murdered in his bed.”

“And you  _ didn’t _ report the incident?” His voice was strained, harsh as he slammed the desk with his hands.

“Reyes, even if I had, they would have accused me of having done something, same as you did just now.”  Moira folded her arms, turning away with a crease in her brow, angry and hurt at his apparent latent distrust.  “No, worse, they would have been infuriated, would have  _ demanded _ to speak to you, and as you weren’t yourself.  They would have assumed that I had done something horrible to you, and there would have been technical difficulties at me trying to control us  _ both _ at the same time to try and pretend like you were something you’re not.  Anyways, I’ve yet to ever be able to control you more than simple commands, at great cost to myself.”

She rubbed her temples.  “This whole things gone sideways, I’ll admit that.  I didn’t realize what Amélie was going to do. I should have, but I wasn’t thinking about  _ her _ , I was more concerned with the fact it had been  _ weeks _ and you had yet to even show signs of waking beyond that thing I’d made.”

They stood there for a moment, and Gabriel anxiously rubbed his hand over his mouth and then put it to the side again.  “You think that  _ Amélie _ did that?”  Gabriel asked, nearly hysterical.

Moira pursed her lips.  “Gabriel, it’s less about what I think and more about the facts of the situation.  No, I had nothing to do with Gerard’s murder. I got the note from her mere hours before the final incident, which, as you well know, took place in their apartment off base in Zurich.  The number informed me that they had been using my work, when I called it, and warned if I attempted to tell anyone they could simply turn the whole damn thing on its head and come after me.” 

Gabriel listened intently, and then softened some.  “It wouldn’t even take that much for others here to believe it, would it?”

“No.”  Moira looked to the floor, unable to hide her bitterness.  “They all already think I work for Talon anyways, they’re just too polite to say it.  They want to paint me as some monster; Gabriel, I’m just a scientist. I had no interest in using an unwilling subject, and I swear to you that I had nothing to do with her original kidnapping and whatever had been done to her in that time.  I had my hands too full with  _ you _ here.”

“And I couldn’t work as an alibi.” Reyes realized, with dawning horror.  “I was out of commission, you had me take several days off because I wasn’t…” 

Moira nodded, rubbing her temples.  “Exactly. There wasn’t ever a way for me to win this game.  Either I go to Overwatch, perhaps save their Gérard until Amélie was cleared again, go to prison for him to die regardless…or I could keep my mouth shut.” She kicked the floor, shaking her head. “It wasn’t like Overwatch had ever done me any favors, or even the benefit of the doubt.  If I had gone to them, I’d have been carted off from you, and. Well, you’d probably have died of thirst before your disease could kill you, I’ve never tested the distance that I can control you from and additionally it was under the impression it didn’t need to eat or drink or sleep.”

Gabriel shifted again, before he slid to the floor.  “Don’t phrase it like that. I don’t particularly enjoy the thought of being some sort of…meat puppet.”  He elaborated, shaking his hands in front of him. “God. Fuck.” He pushed his hand upwards, and rubbed his head beneath his beanie, and quickly drew back in shock.  “Why isn’t my head shaved?” He asked, bewildered, feeling his hair.

She made a small noise.  “I don’t particularly  _ like _ treating you like a meat puppet, that’s why.  I’ve yet to don you like a skin suit, Gabriel, and the task seemed beyond…whatever I could call that shell, that mix of AI and whatever was surface level…”

Gabriel nodded hollowly, pulling his legs closer, almost seeming to get into the fetal position.  “So. What did you do about the number?”

Moira bit her lip. “You’re not going to like hearing about it.”  She stated, carefully tracing the bookshelf across from Gabriel, as his eyes went big as saucers.

“Moira. You didn’t.”  He said, horrified as he began to put the pieces together, the report about the attacks from Overwatch about the  _ Reaper _ sitting on his desk innocuously.

“I had no choice.” She muttered.  “Where  _ else _ was I going to get funding to fix you, Gabriel?  You had been out of commission for a month, people were getting worried about how little you’d made appearances.”  She moved a book, and pulled out two masks. “Our disguises.” She murmured, tracing the skull as she handed it to Gabriel.  “I had to use your most covert name, appearances to even get us off base… and even then, I question how it all came together so easily.”

“Did they  _ know _ ?”  He asked, breathless, and she had to nod.

“They believed I had you under my thumb.  I had to…well, illustrate your potential as an asset, before I could solidify a gentleman’s agreement.”  Moira gravely admitted, gently rubbing at her own mask. “So, in a sense they did. But I lied when it came to my intentions.  I used the money to immediately put you back on your treatment. I saw improvement in you soon after, and left. They said they would contact me when I was needed for my  _ services _ once more.”  She sneered. “As though I’m some type of contractor or my work was ever some type of capitalistic endeavor.  Fools, the lot of them.”

Gabriel sat there, conflicted about the whole situation.  “So it’s not just you in that hole now, it’s me.” He restated, and Moira nodded. 

“To a degree, after all you hold no recollections of any of the events.  No one here has made the connection either… the only silver lining is that Talon seems to think you’ve either gone completely mad or otherwise that I’m in control of this relationship.”  Moira finished, sitting back against her desk, looking to Gabriel. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to go into the lion’s den alone.”

“Fuck.”  Gabriel mumbled, rubbing his face again, tiredly.  “This is too much.” He leaned back against the bookshelf, and sighed.  “I understand your reasoning, Moira, but…fuck. We don’t have a whole lot of options anymore.  I’m assuming you had me avoid people?”

Moira nodded, tapping her fingers against the desk.  “Listen, you said it, not me. They know you well enough that meeting me, piloting a meat puppet, would raise questions.  I could barely just fend them off in a work environment. Amari is worried about you, but Morrison’s been so angry I’ve hardly seen him, and I’ve avoided him otherwise.”

Gabriel grunted.  “Yeah, sounds like them.”  He admitted. “I’ll take care of Amari, at least.  You said she was asking about me. How long should I be ok?”

“Don’t have any huge bursts of emotions and your body should hold itself together for the time being.  I at least have the funds to work more, that’s a positive.” She stressed, rubbing her temples. “That was the trigger, I believe, that cost us this last time.”

Gabriel snorted.  “Yeah, avoid the big bursts of emotion when I was basically dead for a month and some, my life’s  _ still _ in shambles, and we’ve both  _ officially _ worked for Talon.”

“You weren’t  _ dead _ ,” Moira sharply corrected.  “And furthermore, it’s not like we signed up for Talon’s payroll, it was a gentleman’s agreement, the money was produced slowly, and fed through legal measures, and loopholes.  It will be hard for anyone to find out about it, given that their Talon expert is murdered, and the other is…”

 

“In on it.” Gabriel finished her sentence, sagging.  “I know, but that doesn’t make it feel any less…”

“Terrible?”  Moira finished.  “I can agree, unfortunately, but we have few choices here.  Morrison’s of no help to us, and unless you want to  _ die _ , we have to keep up treatment somehow.”  She softened again, pulling out the magazine released during Gabriel’s long sleep.  “To tell you the truth, Overwatch has betrayed more than just me. It’s moved on to you.”

_ BLACKWATCH: IN THE SHADOW OF OVERWATCH _ , was the gaudy title on the US Politics magazine, and right on the front of it was none other than Gabriel Reyes’ face.  It was his uniform, his name in the story. She pulled out the TIME magazine article as well; showing him the symbol of Overwatch split into two as they declared the organization “Fractured” in its own title. 

Gabriel took the magazine with his face on it first, flipping over to the discussion of the Venice incident.  He’d paled considerably, and Moira’s sick hand felt the cold sweat of stress in its overly empathetic style. 

“How, how many details does this get right?” He asked her, looking to her in fear. 

“Only about 50%, but it’s very clear to lay the blame entirely at  _ your _ feet, Gabriel.”  She sighed, leaning against the bookcase.  “The only details it gets absolutely certain is that Overwatch created Blackwatch, placed you as it’s leader…and that the relationship that you and Morrison had meant that there was no one overseeing your decisions.” 

“ _ Christ _ .”  Gabriel rubbed his face.  “I’m sure Jack took  _ that _ well.  This is bad, Moira.”

“It’s been bad for a while.”  She acknowledged. “He’s come looking for you several times.  I’ve had the sense to keep us both out of sight but…well. I can’t say that he’ll be pleased with the fact you’ve essentially avoided him.”

“It’s not like that is my fault.”  Gabriel groused, looking at her in irritation.  “But…well. Explaining that would just lead to more problems.”

He looked around her office, before something seemed to realize something.  “Moira, did you have me take my medication?” His voice was… strangely strangled, showing her an emotion she’d yet to see in Reyes. 

“I didn’t realize you took medication, Gabriel.”  She explained, brow furrowing. “What for?”

He paused, seeming concerned, licking his lips.  “My medication.” He repeated, seeming stuck on that.  “I haven’t taken it in over a month?”

Moira nodded slowly.  “Yes, I already said this.  I didn’t know you needed medication.  I’m not that kind of doctor.” She gave pause as well, before she offered him a hand up.  “But…Gabriel. It might be for the best that you’re off it.” She murmured. “It would have been a huge confounding variable to our work.  Perhaps now that you are off it…you stay off.”

Gabriel looked to her with apprehension.  “I don’t think that's a good idea.” He disagreed.  “It’s…well, it treats my personality disorder.” He murmurs, seeming almost ashamed.  “I’ve been on it for so long, I doubt I should go cold turkey. It could change  _ me _ .”

Her brows rose, before she calmed.  “Gabriel, I also took medication for a personality disorder.”  She sympathized. “I don’t feel as though I’ve changed significantly since I’ve been off.”  She patted his shoulder to reassure him, feeling closer to him than she ever had before. “And if you  _ do _ , you can always just get your prescription refilled.”

“When did you go off?”  Gabriel asked, seeming bewildered by her admission. 

“Maybe 2 days before you hired me.” Moira admitted, quiet.

Gabriel’s eyes widened, as he considered her words. “Then no, I wouldn’t say you have changed much.”  He agreed absently, rubbing his arms. “I suppose I could go back on it, if I encountered difficulties like I had before.”  His brow creased. “And…it is a confounding variable.”

Moira nodded, relaxing and offering a placid smile.  “We aren’t bound by what has happened and who we’ve been.  We have all this time, and now the funds to… change what we are to become.”

He only had another moment’s hesitation.  “You got me out of that one, Moira. I doubt anyone else could have, or would have been willing to.  I trust you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”   
>  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 
> 
>  
> 
> Reyes is back. 
> 
> Hopefully you enjoyed reading this- as always, I love feedback. Next week's chapter has everything start to come to a head.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting ever closer to the end, and Moira and Gabriel are now officially spiralling out of control. Ideally this chapter reads as choppy and her thoughts are muddling their way through things. Hopefully you enjoy it, though! 
> 
> As a side note, if you'd go back and re-read the bottom note, you'll see I accidentally placed the wrong end quote. The end quote there last week actually belonged to this week. Haha. If you pay attention to them, I did try to summarize the chapters with them.

It took Talon a fair amount more time than Moira really expected to contact her with details of her continued employment.  So much time, that Reyes, who had only been on his feet for a few months, was soon caught under fire once more. 

“The Japanese government was tipped off by the  _ fucking _ Yakuza,” Gabriel groused in his pajamas, sitting on Moira’s couch as she got back to her now highly unofficial work on him.  “And now I’m in trouble again. Can’t I catch a break?”

She too was in her pajamas- when he’d seen the AC-GT shirt with in the band’s font, with the symbol in the middle replaced with a signature DNA helix, Gabriel had just about had a stroke. She knew because she felt it in her mind, giving her a pounding headache. 

The two were muddling through their…heightened connection together.  There was nothing else for them to do but push through any hitches hand in hand, otherwise they would both be miserable.  If they overstepped each other’s mental wall and pushed too hard, one of them got sick, either with a migraine or physically ill. They’d both discovered they could essentially isolate movements.  Gabriel could only definitely control Moira’s right arm- that place where her own corruption was most…noticeable. Moira had more…well, the way to phrase it would be more  _ territory _ she could feel, but less power over it, if that made any sense. 

Gabriel sighed in his robe, sipping his glass of water tiredly, the bags under his eyes still prominent on his face.

She just hummed, finishing up his latest round of injections.  “That should keep you together. Do you feel alright, Gabriel?”  She asked, carefully, and he rolled his neck, rubbing at the spot where Moira had given him his injection. 

“Yeah,” he murmured.

“How was your vacation with McCree?  I felt that you enjoyed it…considerably.”  She asked, delicately. “I tried my best to respect your mental boundaries, but…” She made a nebulous wave of her hand, before shrugging.  “You know how it is. Neither of us have much control.”

Gabriel didn’t have the energy to look annoyed.  He just smirked at her. “Yeah. It was…nice, actually.  I might have to do this vacation thing more often.” He looked up.  “It was only to get away from work, but that followed us anyway.” He sighed.  “Genji’s pissed, I think. He’s running through simulation through simulation. Training some new shit Angela’s done, trying to you know.  Cope with the fact it’s almost been a year since Venice and we’re still completely suspended.” 

“I hear that he’s had some competition lately.”  Moira admitted. “Overwatch’s newest trainee.”

“Yeah, if I was a braver man I’d say he was having  _ fun _ with our time traveling pilot.”  Gabriel agreed, sighing. “Poor girl- but good on her for sticking with it.  Jack and I have talked about her some, we can both relate to being…well. You know.”  He gestured towards himself. “But he’s taken a real shining to her.”

“Has he taken his head out of his ass, then?”  Moira asked with an open eye roll. Gabriel snickered, feeling it even though he wasn’t even looking at her.  

“Much as he’s able to.”  Gabriel admitted. “Recently he and I have been working on something.  Without Gerard he knows there’s a bigger and bigger need for someone like  _ me _ .”  He shrugged noncommittally. “Really, he  _ needs _ Blackwatch.   And he knows it.  Needs folks to do the dirty shit Overwatch can’t.  I alone have been able to access the bare bones of shit. Unfortunately, that meant I was slammed during my vacation.”

“So was it a kindness or revenge?”  Moira extrapolated, and Gabriel nodded.

He rolled his shoulders, looking around her room as he waited a bit longer to make sure there weren’t any side effects lurking around in the background for him.  “Who knows. But with what seems to be roiling in Cairo right now…well.” He sighed. “It’s all hands on deck. Only my hands on deck, really. Looks like it’s shaped up to be a real shit show.” 

Moira hummed again, patting his shoulder.  “Seems strange that the Shimada clan have only just now realized our involvement with them.”  She admitted. “Genji made headlines almost a year ago. What ousted us now?”

Gabriel looked at her, red burning in the back of his eyes, in her mind.    _ ‘We both know the answer to that, Moira.’ _

And they did. 

Talon was making their moves in the shadows, and had happily placed the puzzle pieces together for whoever was in charge of that criminal family now that all it’s heirs were gone. 

Moira rubbed her hands together.  “Well, if you’re not planning to leave my quarters, I suppose we have no choice but to play video games together.” She sighed, throwing him a controller with ease. 

Gabriel and her had become well versed in reading the other’s feelings.  It was what had made Gabriel’s vacation with McCree so painful. All those blustery lustful and  _ hot-blooded _ emotions that had coursed through her had made her deeply uncomfortable and unsettled.   And that was even  _ before _ it was put in tandem with the name, ‘Jesse McCree’.

“Stop thinking about it, please, god,” Gabriel groaned as he turned on her ps4, settling in for the night. “Go get, I dunno.  Cups of tea for us, I guess.”

“Do you actually want tea, Gabriel?”  She tilted her head.

“No, I want my mental boundaries back.”  He grunted, “But  _ you _ want tea and I want to avoid having to think about your intimate knowledge of my most secretive relationship.”  He muttered, scratching the back of his head. 

Moira rubbed her temples. “Fine.  I’ll make hot tea for myself, and find something  _ else _ for you so that I don’t waste my nice stores.”  She muttered, understanding the sentiment completely.   “Have fun while I’m gone.”

She walked out, Gabriel only calling back quietly that she could take her time if she needed. 

In fact, she did need to.  The woman took a few steps out of her now semi-shared quarters, before sighing.  She rubbed her face tiredly, feeling the strain of it all on her once more. The lonely halls of the base at night were becoming ever more familiar to her. 

Moira wished that Gabriel wouldn’t say things like that. It wasn’t like Moira liked that situation any better than he did.  She didn’t like being  _ subjected _ to that type of personal knowledge with no choice in the matter at all. 

She found herself in the kitchen, and faced once more with a familiar face.  Ana Amari was standing in the office over an empty cup of tea with a boiling kettle on an eye of the stove.  She was in her own version of pajamas, a delicate silk robe that covered her skin made Moira turn pink, only narrowly resisting the urge to have to her jaw drop.    

“Good evening, Dr. O’Deorain,” The smooth words didn’t entirely hide Ana’s surprise.  “I didn’t expect you here.”

“I didn’t expect you, either.”  Moira admitted. “I thought you were on mission- the issue in Cairo…”

“There is nothing more for me to do in Cairo.”  Ana explained, seeming…worn down. “The crisis will be handled by our many humanitarian offices and branches.  Jack needed me to come back here to help deal with…” She sighed. “The Japanese government making noise about Blackwatch.”

“Gabriel’s informed me.”  Moira murmured, taking the extra steps to grab out her own tea supplies from the cabinet.  “He’s rather upset about it, sitting in my room in pajamas.”

“How was his vacation with McCree?”  Ana asked, seeming amused at this admission.  “I hadn’t realized he’d made it home yet.”

“He says he enjoyed it.”  Moira tapped her fingers on the countertop, before leaning across from Ana, waiting for the water to be ready.  “And that he really should have tried this ‘vacation’ thing sooner.”

Ana rolled her eyes, a smile slowly widening.  “Now, if only I could convince Jack of the same.  I’ve been eying a retreat in Hawaii for a long time now.  Now that I know  _ Gabriel _ would be on board, I need to spend some time conspiring to get Jack off base and off the radar.  He’s going silver and he’s the youngest of all three of us.” Ana snickered, her own greying hair wrapped up tidily.   

“You would go with the three of you?”  Moira asked, curiously, a bit baffled. “Gabriel and Morrison’s relationship has seemed…”

As if it wanted to finish her sentence, the kettle began its telltale scream.

They both stared owlishly at it, before laughing quietly, moving together to get their late night drinks. 

“Well, in truth, I’d like to go with all of the original strike team.”  Ana admitted, “It’s true, Gabriel and Jack can butt heads, and they can  _ both  _ be stubborn fools when they  want to.” She admonished them with a shake of her heads.  “But it’s because they care about each other, in their own way.  They’ve been separated for a long time, but…I would say they love each other still.” 

“Love?”  Moira asked, voice soft.  “You think those two…?”

Ana paused, considering that, “I don’t necessarily think it’s romantic love.”  She poured tea for herself, and into Moira’s cup as well. “But I think that if it came down to it, they are two sides of the same coin, and there is no one that one cares for more than the other.”

Moira stirred in her packet of tea, watching the reddish color seep out and dye the water.  “What of…” She paused, unsure how common the knowledge of McCree and Gabriel’s relationship was- or how much she was truly at liberty to discuss.

“What of what?”  Ana prompted, already adding in sugar, expression curious. 

Moira pursed her lips before deciding that Reyes had made it her business, and it was only with Ana.  “What of McCree?”

Ana’s brow furrowed further.  “What  _ of _ McCree?”  She repeated inquisitively, obviously not understanding.  Moira went flush. 

“Ah.  I don’t know if I’m…at liberty to discuss this.” 

Brown eyes widened as Ana’s eyebrows shot up.  “Really now?” She asked, almost shocked. “I had seen how…cozy and friendly McCree was, but I had assumed that his relationship with Angela took priority.  Not to mention his various dalliances with others over the years. And then there was that girl Ashe in his history…” She considered all these options. “I knew of his crush on us older members, but I had thought they had faded with time.”

Moira shrugged, feeling a bit overwhelmed, and she clearly looked it.  Ana laughed, “Oh, dear, don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. I hadn’t expected that from either of them…well.  I suppose then…it depends on how much Gabriel is willing to let Jesse in, and how much Jesse is willing to take.  It might be that only time will tell.”

XXXXX

The next night, she received her first phone call from Maximilian on her talon-issued device. “Hello, Dr. O’Deorain.”

“Hello, I was expecting to hear from you sooner.”  Moira muttered, pacing in her room. 

“Ah.  Sorry, we were busy with other projects.”  He explained calmly. “Worry not, we still have need of your talents.”

“When can I expect those details?”  Moira asked quietly. “I’m in need of a real lab off base.  I’ve purchased somewhere nearby but the equipment is rather expensive.”

Maximilian hummed.  “I can always give you a loan, Dr. O’Deorain, if it’s an emergency.”  He politely informed, and Moira sneered into the phone. At her silence, Maximilian continued, “We’ll contact you again roughly a month from now.  We want you to perform baseline tests after we’ve finished our work, so that you know where to start.”

“What is the project, if I might ask?”

“We’re calling it the Widowmaker.”  Was all Maximilian said; before he hung up the phone and left the dial tone playing on Moira’s comm, held tightly in her hand. 

XXXXX

The UN had finally come together with a solution to their Overwatch problem.  And it was something that none of the leadership particularly liked- however following the Japanese government’s insistence at the UN general assembly, there had ben a vote, and they had pushed forward a civilian head.

Director Petras was an official chosen for them by that UN general assembly.  He wasn’t military; he didn’t even have much history in governance. He was a professor who had written extensively about the state of Overwatch and how they had so little oversight.  It was what had made him such a popular person to pick. 

Moira and Gabriel both hated him.  It seemed like Jack and Ana felt much the same. 

He was, to say the least, incredibly annoying. 

Petras had no idea what anything was or how anything functioned.  He ordered fresh investigations into old wounds and was always,  _ always _ calling the Strike Commander.  Gabriel hated that Jack was the only one taking that heat- and he hated that director Petras apparently didn’t want or  _ need _ to speak with Gabriel about anything. 

That was a recipe for pure disaster, plain and simple.  There was nothing Reyes despised more than being spoken over and spoken for.  That was why he was still utterly unhappy with his Moira situation. 

However, his first act was to try and air out as much of the bad blood to the public as possible.  Meaning Reyes had to go before another UN official and explain why that was implicitly dangerous. 

Luckily, the Strike Commander could be reasoned with, when it came down to a certain ex-clan member’s safety, along with reminders about how many Blackwatch members had stuck with them through a year long suspension, he was able to put together a committee to head to what was essentially a trial. 

XXXXX

“It is on this basis that we’re summarily denying any files relating to and about Shimada Genji from entering the sphere of public information.”  Gabriel spoke firmly on their closed circuit television. Genji finally breathed, and Moira looked towards him quietly. 

“That’s a relief.”  Jesse admitted, sipping from his flask.

“Don’t celebrate just yet, cowboy.”  Moira muttered, tapping her fingers as she felt Gabriel’s stare down with the UN officials before him, as the camera turned towards them. 

“Thank you for your case, Commander Reyes.  We are of course as happy as ever that you so greatly value the personal safety of your assets.”  The UN official spoke plainly, her reassurances falling on suspicious ears. “Strike Commander. What is your opinion on Commander Reyes’ case?”

“He is very much correct.”  The camera turned towards Jack, the blonde maintaining an air of indifference.  “Once again, to reiterate my esteemed colleague’s professional evaluation, Shimada Genji is a unique asset, as he approached us from the criminal family of his volition.  As part of his contract with Overwatch, we assured him our protection to the best of our abilities. We were able to save him from the life threatening injuries his family bestowed on him before they were aware he was a traitor.  We know that were his files to become public knowledge, he would be at imminent risk of assassination attacks.” 

Jack paused to look at the woman more plaintively, trying to appeal to her empathy.  “They have already tried to kill him once, and almost succeeded. We should limit the possibility that they find out they’ve not.  It’s our job to protect our own.”

The woman softened considerably- Jack’s words striking an emotional cord in her.  “Please state for the record, which pages do you detail the injuries and reports of the assassination attempt on Shimada Genji?”

“Dr. Ziegler’s medical reports can be found on pages 104 through 114.”  Jack explained mildly, turning the pages with her. “Blackwatch’s analysis report of the attempted murder scene and the incident is located on pages 243 and 244 of the Shimada clan intelligence packet. Be warned for rather graphic content in all of those pages, as images of his injuries were well documented.”

“Is Shimada Genji with us today?”  The woman asked quietly, turning through the pages carefully. 

“He is.”  Gabriel nodded, as Moira felt relief course through their shared bond.  “He’s watching us right now from the other room.”

“I’d like for him to come forward.”  The woman ordered politely, and Genji stood. McCree pat his back.

“Go get ‘em tiger.” He said, before taking another sip from his flask. 

Genji left, and Moira eyed him.  “Keep in mind, McCree, that you were the one to find him.  She could call  _ you _ up as well.”  Jesse gave her a defiant shrug, and Moira just sighed, looking to the side, irritated. 

McCree didn’t look at her as he lit a cigar.  “Don’t let it go to your head, but thanks, for getting us to go on that vacation together.”

“It wasn’t for your sake.”  Moira bit back in a tone just shy of rude.  “But Gabriel enjoyed it as well.”

McCree looked away as Genji explained the terms of his contract and how much his family had taken away from him, and how important this work was for him. 

XXXXX

Overwatch received its reprieve. The continued safety of their assets took priority over the demands of the public, and there was some room to breathe once more. 

They didn’t have time to celebrate any of their victories.  Moira was surprised to turn on the news to find that London had become the victim of a series of terrorist attacks.  She opened her door to find Gabriel, expecting treatments and holding a handful of files. 

“Make this round fast.  The UK’s under attack.” He ordered, coughing up black gunk from stress.  “They need me to start rounding up any information I can. Blackwatch is  _ still _ under suspension.  So it’s just me on deck, if I can even call it that.” 

Moira nodded mutely, the news that the Brits decision to completely cut off Overwatch following Venice bringing her great pleasure if nothing else.  “Bear in mind Gabriel that your treatments are necessary to keep you alive and conscious.” Moira dryly reminded, getting out her things. 

“Has Talon contacted you?”  Gabriel asked tensely, and Moira nodded as she pat his arm to remind him that she was preparing an injection, and as such it wasn’t wise to be so tense. 

“They have.”  She agreed uneasily, cleaning his skin absentmindedly.  “They apologized for taking so long. All they said was that they were busy with something, but they’re definitely still keen on using my abilities on their upcoming project.”

Gabriel tensed.  “Do you think…?”

“He didn’t say as much, but it’s not a hard stretch.”  Moira injected him with his latest treatment, the man hissing out black smoke in displeasure.  “Talon’s goals are to restart the war with humans and omnics. You know that. There is no place better than London to do that, as it’s practically a powder keg anyways.”

Gabriel nodded, biting his lower lip in thought.  “You’re right.” He thought more about that. “I’ll have to start preparing reports to Jack about Null Sector- they’re likely whoever did this, if Talon had  _ any  _ part in it.”

“We still can’t act.”  Moira murmured. “Overwatch activity is expressly forbidden from the UK.”

“Jack will still want to know about what’s going on.”  Gabriel admitted.

She tilted her head before dryly asking him, “And how will we  _ know _ what’s going on, exactly?  Aside from the fact we are working for the enemy?” 

That made Gabriel falter.  He paused, opened his mouth again, before scowling.  “We wouldn’t. Not before anyone else does.”

“So we must wait.”  Moira informed, shaking her head in resignation. 

XXXXX

That night, she found that familiar face in the same spot.  Ana didn’t look surprised this time. “You’re up late,” She said dryly, and Moira gave a passive shrug as she came in to clean her dishes. 

“I’ve always been a night owl.”  She admitted. “Even when I was a young girl, I always enjoyed sneaking into my father’s office and reading whatever I could get my hands on.”  Moira admitted carefully. 

Ana nodded, humming.  “What is your relationship like, with your family?”  She asked, thoughtful. Moira tensed.

“It was never extremely good.  But of late, it’s seen better days.” 

Brown eyes were soft.  “I can relate to that.”  She admitted, folding her hands.  “I have done the best I can to be a good mother, yet…I feel like I’ve failed her.”  She gestures helplessly. “She has given me an impossible task, my daughter has.”

Moira waited for more information, sitting quietly with a now clean cup of tea.  Ana thoughtlessly poured her mug full of hot water made on the stove, finding words. 

“My daughter, Fareeha, has applied to join Overwatch.”  She finally explained. “She is…well. She’s very well qualified.  She’s a former soldier now, has a degree in engineering. She knows so many of us and has told all of us to no uncertain degree that she  _ dreams _ of working here.”

“So what is the issue?”  Moira asked, not yet passing judgment. 

Ana cupped her tea tight in her hands.  “Overwatch is struggling right now. It’s under fire from so many sides.”  She shook her head. “And even if it wasn’t…I have  _ never _ wanted this life for my daughter.  I tried everything in my power to make her take more after her father, and yet…she still follows after me.” 

Moira nodded, sympathetic.  “That sounds like…quite the conundrum to have to deal with.”  She placidly agreed. 

“I can’t rightly let her join when this whole place stands as…well.  It has the potential to go down, and when it does, if it does, it would serve as a stain on her record.  I cannot rightly let her join because if I do it would make us look worse, no matter how talented she is.”  Ana looked hopeless. “But if I send that letter of rejection to her, there is only one way my daughter will respond: with anger and frustration.” 

Moira nodded again, understanding that well.  “I can personally say, at least, that as long as you put forth the effort to work with her through your decision making, whenever she’s ready to come to terms with it… your relationship will survive.”  She paused, wondering how much to say here. “My mother…well. We don’t speak anymore. She has never reached out to me to ask how I’ve managed after my paper.” Moira looked into her cup of black tea quietly. 

“It’s been 2 years now.  If she called me I would answer, though, or if she wrote me.  My mother, for all her faults,  _ tried _ until that point.  That’s what matters, I think.”

Ana put a hand over Moira’s back, and hugged her gently.  “I hope that’s true.” She agreed, quiet. “For both our sakes.”

XXXXX

In the mail, she finally received her orders. 

“THE WIDOWMAKER PROJECT,” read the title, handed off to her by some shifty looking woman that she recognized vaguely from Reyes’ memories that slipped through at the very sight of her- one of the workers who had caught his mind in the aftermath of the explosion of the Rome facility. 

Talon was inside the walls, and it was becoming more and more obvious. 

Opening the page made her almost vomit.  Amélie Lacroix’s face was there, blank and bound.  The orders were rather simple- they’ve been working on training her into a sniper.  The thought was mind boggling to Moira- a ballet dancer turned into a sniper? And why a sniper of all things?

The feeling of Ana’s hand on her back burned at her skin as she read her traitorous orders over fully. 

XXXXX

She wished she were able to say that that had been her final hit off Ana.  But they always seemed to find herself in that kitchen with her late at night, sitting and talking about everything and yet nothing important.  It was like a secret, if Moira showed it to the light of day it would vanish. 

Tonight Ana decided to read poetry with her in the dead of night, the helpless roil of the London Uprising that they still knew so little about leaving her in search of…other things to do to alleviate her stress. 

“ _ Come and see me at nightfall, the night will keep our secret.”   _ Ana read aloud as Moira cupped her mug of tea tight against her chest, the warmth emanating from within it, within her- which warmth was stronger was for someone else to decide.   _ “When I’m with you I wish the sun and moon never turn up and the starts stay put.” _

“Rather romantic.”  Moira murmured, that focused content on Ana’s face something that she was desperately trying to absorb into her being. 

Ana closed her book.  “Mmm, yes, she was a very well spoken poet.”  She agreed, wistfully rolling her neck, before taking a sip of tea.  “A lot of her work, and the work of her lover is very sad though. I like this poem though because…well, translation from the old Arabic often turns it into a more passive poem than not. The first line can also be translated as “Wait for me at nightfall.”  Ana explained, passion for art and language filling her. 

“That’s rather interesting.”  Moira agreed, curious and enjoying herself more than she had any right to.  “Does your book include the Arabic version, then?” 

Ana nodded, handing her the book.  “Yes, but it’s very old. She wrote this in the 11 th century in Spain.”

Moira opened the book back up to the bookmarked portion, and ran her fingers over the translation below the poem itself.  “Forgive me if my pronunciation is terrible,” she said in defense of herself before even attempting to read. “It’s been a good deal of time since I’ve practiced.”

Ana watched in shock as Moira did her best to stumble through the Arabic poetry, giving a full reading of it with only a few mistakes and needing to repeat certain words when the short vowel pronunciation was off.  When she was done, Moira looked up, and Ana gave a smile, laughing with her next exhale.

“You’re just continuously full of surprises, aren’t you?”  Ana said, her tone edging ever closer to affectionate.  _ “When did you study Arabic?” _

“Ah.   _ In university.”   _ Moira responded back, a bit stilted and formal.  “ _ I’ve never studied Egyptian, so you’ll have to forgive me.  My professor was Iraqi- her name was Sahar.” _

_ “Weren’t you already in a rigorous scientific program?”   _ Ana asked, almost bewildered, chuckling at her defense and waving a hand to pardon her.  “ _ Why study one of the hardest languages in the world for fun?” _

Moira successfully resisted the urge to stutter, but her flush was noticeable, undoubtedly.  “ _ My program wasn’t all that hard, I found myself rather bored with it a lot of the time, so…and I admired Arabic for its… _ well _ , I thought it’s a very linguistically beautiful, very structured language.” _  Moira left out her massive crush on the woman that had fueled a very key part of her desire to study Arabic. That would have triggered what McCree called the “creep” response in Ana. 

Ana’s eyes sparkled in the moonlight that shone through the windows above them.  “ _ It’s rare for me to find someone who can talk to me like this.”  _ She admitted carefully.  “ _ I’m happy, if surprised, that you can.” _

XXXXX

Not even 3 days later, Moira was in a small town outside Zurich, meeting Maximilian.  The omnic gave her a kiss on her cheek, a gesture that made Reyes on the other end grimace.  He was, of course, hanging around her and checking on how she was doing. 

_ ‘He’s so creepy.’   _ Reyes informed her.   _ ‘Fuck. Moira, don’t do anything stupid.  McCree’s already got that covered 10 ways to Sunday.  I need to go handle this.’ _

Moira hardly gave pause as she kissed Maximilian’s other cheek in the traditional French greeting.  “I’ve read the file.”

“Perfect.”  Maximilian smoothly replied, gesturing for Moira to follow him to his car.  “We’re driving to our location for…the best seats in the house.” He said with some humor.  “Your bodyguard isn’t here with you?”

“The situation in Zurich is a lot.”  Moira said loftily. “I can’t occupy his time completely otherwise we’ll both be suspicious.”

“More suspicious than the news already claims you both to be?”  Maximilian’s tone was smug and Moira felt irked, but kept her pleasant façade up.  “Well, that’s fine then. We only  _ really _ need you today- to examine the work we’ve done in action so that you can start making plans and designs for her.”  Maximilian expressed. “We want her to be your canvas, so you should get a good look at her in action before you begin.”

“Where is she right now?”

Maximilian stared at her, and Moira found she hated how inscrutable and yet entirely smug he still managed to be.  “Where do you think she is?”

“In London.”  Moira immediately responded, to Maximilian’s pleasure. 

“Good deducting skills.  The chaos there makes it the perfect testing grounds.”

The drive took just over an hour, heading back through Zurich even.  Much of that time was spent with minor small talk and stilted discussion of what she was using Talon’s funds for. 

When they finally arrived, they brought Moira to a computer room, gesturing for her to sit down.  Perched on a metallic walkway, skin discolored and dressed in Talon’s uniform, was Amélie Lacroix. She had a Talon-issued sniper rifle held at the ready. 

“Overwatch has arrived.”  Amélie informed the quietly. “Do I engage?”

“Oh?”  Maximilian responded, surprised and amused.  “Why are they here? They’ve just recently been expressly forbidden from acting there, courtesy of the Prime Minister himself.” He hummed, making Moira’s stomach churn with unease. “Perhaps they’re just eager to make a bigger mess of themselves.”

“I hadn’t realized they were going to get involved.”  Moira explained. “Reyes hasn’t done anything to help them aside from what he was ordered to do.  Overwatch had no real Intel on Null Sector’s activities. Someone must have gone in on the ground.”

“Blackwatch Agent Jesse McCree is here.”  Amélie responded blankly. “He’s made the rounds and has been followed by various drones.”

“Do you have sights on him now?”  Maximilian asked, voice careful. 

“No, but I’ve been tracking him.  The rest of them are loud and obnoxious- Null Sector has done their work in fighting them.  I assessed that Agent McCree was the bigger threat.”

“Good assessment, Lacroix.  He is, in fact, the most dangerous person there.” Maximilian hummed.  “Get him back into your sights.” He ordered. “He’s your target for your examination today.”

Moira’s mouth went dry. 

She had few choices now, as Maximilian handed her the controls and the microphone.

XXXXX

She had made her choice.

She had returned unnoticed perhaps 20 minutes before the party had, and was thankful that the cloud of Gabriel’s worry had taken precedence over figuring out what it was she had done. 

Moira made her way to Gabriel’s side as he paced the halls, and Moira put a hand on his shoulder.  “Reyes, I came as soon as I was able.” Moira whispered. “What’s happened?”

“The Strike team managed it, they’re on there way here now.”  He explained. “But, they reported that they found agent McCree.  He was badly wounded- a sniper has shot him and he was downed and unconscious.”  He licked his lips. “They say he’s stable, but… why was a sniper there? That doesn’t bode well.”

Moira used that fog of worry to hide everything, and Moira rubbed the skin on his arm where she gave him her shots with her right, gloved hand.  “He’s strong, our cowboy.” Moira explained. “I’m sure he’ll pull through.”

_ “You chose to let him live?”  Maximilian had been extremely surprised. _

_ Moira nodded.  “Better to let him live, force the agents to focus on getting him out alive instead of giving them a new target to worry about so soon.  Agent McCree has many friends among them, your files on him are rather lacking in that regard.” She informed. “They would make finding his killer an immediate priority. Like this, they have to leave the scene of the crime, and Lacroix can come back.  I’ve seen what I need to see anyways. She hesitated when she took the shot, and it threw her off.” _

Moira’s guilty heart beat hard in her chest as her Commander’s attention was immediately snapped to the doors of the air dock, where they were undoubtedly returning with McCree gravely injured. 

Moira pat his shoulder again.  She didn’t have to speak as he rushed off to go find Jesse amongst them.  The Strike Commander and Captain Amari, both sitting close by, watched Gabriel’s actions intently as the doors opened and medical staff flooded the area. 

Ana approached her, quiet, putting a delicate hand on her back to let her know that she had come to her side. 

“You care about Gabriel, don’t you?”  Ana asked as they both hung in the background of the returning party- Lieutenant Wilhelm was bloodied, Engineer Lindholm seemed to be alright, and he was grousing loudly about how Reinhardt hadn’t needed to be so dramatic in ridding the final OR-14 units.  Dr. Ziegler agreed, seeming irate with him. Though the giant of a man laughed them off, Moira recognized that emotion in his eyes of it not just having been dramatics.

The Brit was a young thing.  She was rather diminutive, even next to Dr. Ziegler, let alone when she stood next to the Lieutenant.  Her condition was really a curious one. If Moira had more time and was a braver person, she would ask Winston permission to watch one of her sessions.  Unfortunately, Dr. Ziegler watched those like a hawk, overly protective of the young woman. 

The one who had taken the beating was Jesse, who had been transported on a stretcher.  Gabriel still looked incredibly worried and was overly… _ concerned _ , flapping around like a chicken with its head cut off. 

The fact that Dr. Ziegler didn’t seem overly concerned spoke volumes about how far her and Jesse had fallen, but also told Moira that he would be alright, in the end. 

But Ana had been left hanging in their private conversation.  “I do.” Moira agreed quietly. “I do more than I think most people credit me.  His condition…” She trailed off. “I care about his wellbeing greatly. I’m glad that Agent McCree has returned home safely.” She finished off, the words sitting uneasily in her throat, as her intimate knowledge of the part she played in this.

Ana smiled, offering a faint chuckle.  “Sometimes you two have seemed to be two peas in a pod.  I accused him and you of having a telepathic link one day and he looked like he was going to vomit.”  Ana joked, but it did fall somewhat flat on Moira, who knew full well that she and him  _ did _ have a telepathic bond. 

She snorted quietly.  “Do we really seem that close?”  Moira asked Ana, who nodded in affirmation. 

“You’re the first person in 20 years who managed to get him to take a vacation.  Everyone knows you’re close now.” 

Moira stared again as McCree’s monitors made some additional noise. 

_ "Target injured."  Lacroix had asked, deadened and uncaring as the camera in her visor showed a McCree prone on the streets, choking and suffocating on his own blood, a new scar across his face.  "Proceed with elimination?"  _

_ Moira had weighed her options.  On the one hand, this was what Talon had wanted her to do- to test Lacroix’s base talents as their new sniper.  But on the other hand, that nervous thrum of energy that she had only recently barred off filled her with guilt.  She may have wanted to be rid of Jesse McCree, but…she couldn’t do that to Gabriel Reyes.  _

_ “Negative.”  Moira denied her.  “You’ve done your job, Lacroix.  Return to transport, I have what I need.”  She paused for Lacroix to answer her. “…The other agents are nearby, right?”  She confirmed, voice uncharacteristically hesitant. If he had been sufficiently injured… then not being found would be a huge issue. She didn’t want him to die.  That would cause…serious injury to Gabriel and his emotional stability. _

Gabriel held Jesse’s hand tight as his vitals spiked and Dr. Ziegler rushed to his bedside, calling for more help to bring him into surgery. Jesse was crashing, he needed help now, and worry became clear on Dr. Ziegler’s face as well, while Gabriel panicked, telling him to hold on for him. 

Ana gave her a final glance, offering her a squeeze of her shoulder, before going to the younger man’s side as well. 

Moira breathed out as she was released from that spell, her breath tight in her throat.

She needed a way out of this.  She couldn't do this. One way or the other, she needed a new methodology, something that would be able to reconcile her growing heart and her need to heal Reyes. 

Something had to give. And right now it seemed like it was on track to be the image of who she was, and who she wanted to be. 

For now, she was warm from where that imprint was left in her skin, and her heart was heavy in her chest, the boundaries between herself and all those close to her, if she could call it that, growing and threatening to overtake her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I'm not interested in how things were, or how we ended up where we are now. What interests me is what we are now and what we will be.”  
>  Ahmed Khalid Towfik, Utopia
> 
>  
> 
> Moira's ready to break. Something has to give. What do you think that might be in the form of?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I can't believe it but I've finally done it! We're in for the home stretch!!! I'd like to give a special thanks to ODeorainFan2150 for sticking through this the whole way through!!! You ROCK!!! But thanks to everyone for reading this and I hope these final chapters don't let anyone down.
> 
> NSFW warning for this chapter and the next, the epilogue.

Time passed like a physical thing, each tick of the clock pounding down on her guilty heart.  Every week she had to work on Widowmaker, on Gabriel, and on herself. Things were changing, and perhaps they were changing too fast, too much, for her liking.

Gabriel was changing- she noticed the way that the shadows grew around him and how he clung to the surface but found his grip slipping more and more often.  Was it the lack of his medication or those new voices that clung to his sides in his grief and worry? Moira couldn’t bring herself to worry when it meant that Reaper- _her Reaper_ \- brought her cash and she was able to place an expensive order for equipment or refills of whatever drug she had need of.

She couldn’t bring herself to question it when she was able to finish a treatment and Gabriel breathed in as himself once more.

They were becoming more and more reliant on each other.  They oftentimes only spoke telepathically, especially if they never saw each other face to face.  Even if they were both hesitant about it, they both needed this connection with each other- the only person who understood anything about what the other was going through.

Jesse McCree remained unconscious for about a months time.   It was filled with stolen meetings with Ana in the night and Gabriel’s all-encompassing worry for his underling’s life and her pounding heart straining against her two faced existence.

When McCree woke up, he was distraught by the fact he’d almost died, but in typical fashion his first instinct was to push away those worried people in his life instead of pulling them close.  Gabriel supposed that he needed the time to come to terms with it himself, and his lack of memory of the incident that Moira remembered only worsened his reaction.

Reyes was worried about him- worried that he was so terrible at resting, but Moira dryly reminded him that he had no room to criticize.

Reyes was also worried about himself and Moira.  “Something’s wrong.” He pointed out absently. “I can’t seem to notice where all my time keeps going.”

Moira shrugged as she prepared a shot.  “I’ve just come to terms with the fact too much is going on, and because of that I’ve completely disconnected from the flow of time.”  She only partly joked, getting a hint of a snort from him.

“Funny.  I’m serious though.  Time _shouldn’t_ be like this.”  He gestured to them both.  “And we have one thing in common.”

“Only the one thing, you reckon?”

“ _Funny_.  But still.  Moira, you know something’s wrong.”  He pointed out, crossing his arms. “Do you even remember when it started happening to you?  Because I can’t remember when I stopped experiencing time right. Even before whatever the fuck happened when I melted, as you said.”

Moira paused, thinking on that.  She grew a tad concerned when she found that no, she couldn’t really recall when that happened.  “Not particularly,” She admitted. “It is strange, but then again, we’ve been rather occupied by everything that’s going on.”  She rationalized. “We can’t be blamed for not paying attention to time when our lives have fallen apart.”

Gabriel grunted, shrugging.  “I know that things are crazy but… even during the crisis, I don’t remember ever feeling like this.”  He admitted, looking to his hands. “I don’t like this. Or how it feels. I think…we might consider outside help.”  He told her lowly. “I don’t know who _would_ help, but…something has to change.”

Moira looked towards the window. She sighed, that thing in her chest heavy, weighing her down.

“I agree.  But…I don’t know who would trust us, were we to try to explain ourselves.”  She murmured, looking to him quietly. “Neither of us are seen in the best of ways, now.”

Gabriel just nodded, folding his arms and closing his eyes, sighing.

“I don’t know either.  I don’t think we have…any real choices, anymore.  It’s not like Jack would _care_ even if I told him.”  He spoke bitterly, eyes red and smoke leaking from his mouth- Moira absently recognized that change in him.  “It’s all about his reputation, and what I’ve done to it.” He sneered, the expression a subtle sign of whatever Talon was doing with him, passively.

Moira took a final sip of her tea, and sighed as she stared at her empty cup.  “I don’t know Morrison at all, you know I can’t speak for him.” She reminded absently.

Gabriel sneered at the name, before rolling his shoulders and ghosting to the door in an effortless show of his growing ease with his powers.  “Go get your tea, I have work to get done. Doomfist assigned me some shit to take care of.”

He paused at the doorway.  “Moira, are we in too deep?”  He asked, hand on the doorknob.

Moira gave him a taste of her…complicated feelings on the matter, and Gabriel squeezed the doorknob tighter, making Moira’s fist bunch up and her nails cut into her skin.

She hissed at the sensation, and Gabriel released both their grips.  She looked to her hand, where her fingernails grew uncontrollably fast.  He looked to his own hand, and saw how the tips of his fingers had black smoke wafting off the end of sharp talons.

Without needing to say a word more, they parted for the time being, Gabriel almost running from this incident, and Moira held her bleeding hand against her chest.

Their bodies were changing, their minds were changing- and neither of them liked it, when they noticed it happening.

Moira took a nail clipper, and cut away her overgrown fingernails- their changes to their DNA meant that all these parts of them grew faster than they knew what to do with.  She sighed once her nails were ‘normal’ again, and quietly grabbed her empty teacup.

She…needed another perspective. And she wanted to let the night hide their secret.

She needed to see Ana Amari about all this.

XXXXX

She found herself in the kitchen, waiting nervously for her.  It was odd that the woman wasn’t around, but Moira put on a pot of water for them both, and waited patiently.

 

Moira found she didn’t have to wait long.  A lonely figure found their way into the kitchen, and their eyes connected.  Ana looked…troubled, by something, and Moira softened instinctively. She approached, gesturing to the teakettle. “I’ve got on water, for us.”  Moira told, uncertain of how to proceed, her innards squirming in her chest as Ana looked to her, and then looked at the water.

Her brow raised in surprise as Ana boldly turned off the stovetop, and then turned to Moira, looking her over.

“Ana?”  Moira pressed, furrowing her brows, a bit uncertain about her actions, before the woman took her hands into her own.  Ana felt her fingers, and her touch electrified her fingertips wherever Ana’s connected. Ana brushed her fingertips up Moira’s arms, and Moira’s eyes widened as the smaller woman before her pressed her way into Moira’s personal space, and wrapped her arms around her, drawing her into a hug.

She was shocked for a moment, before tentatively wrapping her own arms around Ana.  Her form was petite against Moira’s, and Ana shook with some unspoken grief, before burying her face into Moira’s chest, squeezing the woman tighter.

“I rejected Fareeha’s application.”  Ana finally said whatever was holding her down, holding tight to Moira.  “I had to…but…she’s going to be so upset with me.”

For the first time in her life, Moira found herself without words.   She had never been one to become tongue tied, and yet, staring at Ana, she found herself in just such a state.

In truth, Moira had no idea what to say to comfort Ana.  She had turned away from her family, and she had numerous other problems in her life- the same ones she’d wanted to see Ana about, to confess her sins before her.  And yet, Ana was the weakened one now.

Ana stared up at her, and her trembling hands found their way further up Moira’s lanky form that had always stood so much out of place, and she dragged her face down towards her.  Her lips met Moira’s, and the shock it transferred into her made her melt, her every defense shattering as she finally, _finally_ got what it was she always had wanted.

Moira finally returned the gesture, wrapping her arms around Ana and kissing her with just that same amount of desperation.  Her hands greedily felt at Ana’s skin that glowed in the moonlight as they made out, Ana equally squabbling for her touch, to feel whatever this was that they were doing.

Their hands intertwined for the briefest of moments before Moira broke away and lifted Ana up, resting her form on the counter for better ease to kiss as Ana unbuttoned Moira’s shirt and loosened her tie, the two drowning in the moment and in each other.

Ana’s shirt was disheveled, and her clothes were hanging off her shoulder, and her breath was hard as she pulled away, staring down at Moira from her perch on that countertop, her hands gently caressing her skin. “We shouldn't do this here.”  She said, breathlessly.

Moira wrapped her arms tight around her again, returning the intimacy, feeling something shift inside her.  “Let's…go to my room.” She suggested, carefully. “We can... do this…privately.”

Ana nodded wordlessly, and held onto Moira’s hand, setting her skin on fire in the process.

Moira unlocked the door for them both, showing Ana the way in, heading to her bed to sit with her.  Ana stared at the bed for only a moment before she sat across from her, relaxing quietly close to Moira.

Ana licked her lips, and she sized Moira up.  She removed her coat, and Moira mirrored her actions, feeling her heartbeat start racing in her chest, coming to exuberant life as Ana undressed across from Moira, the two becoming naked in her bed together.

Their hands tied together as Ana moved forward, climbing over Moira’s giving form like a sleek cat examining its prey, her hand delicately brushing her cheekbone, the thumb catching her chin, and coming up towards her lip, rubbing the sensitive skin.

They connected again, Ana taking control from Moira so totally, and Moira so willingly giving it to her in a way that she had always thought herself beyond doing.    

She submitted to this new sensation as Ana kissed her, claimed her entire being, sending electric fire through all of Moira’s being.

“I’m going to fuck you.” Ana whispered into her ear during a moment’s respite from their earlier activities, and thusly her hands found themselves on Moira’s breasts, caressing them, making Moira’s breath catch in her throat.

“F, fuck,” Moira managed to say, breaths coming faster and faster as her heart slammed against its cage, Ana’s hands deftly razing her skin with their touches, leaving no part of her unscathed, unclaimed.  She was all consuming, and Moira was simply along for the ride. A hand cupped her breast and the thumb of it massaged her nipple, drawing out a scream of pleasure from her throat.

Ana seemed amused, pausing just a second, posed with her hands on her chest like she was holding the murder weapon. “I didn’t take you for a screamer, Moira.”  She teased, hands dragging down Moira’s already over sensitive front, one caressing her nipple.

Ana’s touches made her _fidget_ and drew sounds from her lips that Moira had thought herself incapable of making, breathy and small and weak and vulnerable and yet Moira didn’t find herself wanting to _stop_.

Her other hand snuck like a thief towards its true goal, and Moira’s toes curled in delight as her hand ghosted over her black panties, before her fingers doubled back and slipped beneath the soft fabric.  Moira gasped as she felt Ana press further, and moaned loudly as the woman delicately rubbed her clit with one fingers, others spreading her pussy apart.

Moira trembled as Ana broke her down like this, her eyes wide and her heart practically coming out of her chest, her breaths becoming shorter and more often as Ana’s motions on her pussy became faster and more frantic, rougher.

Her voice punctuated the night with another shout, as her legs tightened together and her hands gripped the fabric of her bed.  Ana’s hands drew back from Moira’s pussy with her cum sticky on her fingers, and she pulled down Moira’s panties with a sly motion.

Ana spread Moira’s lithe legs apart, and Moira stared, panting as the woman smiled at her.  “I’m going to eat you out.” She said, seeming pleased with herself. “And then you’re going to show me what you’ve got.”

Moira nodded dumbly, excitement taking the words out of her throat.

She knew that she had to say something, tell Ana, they needed to talk, but in the moment, the single moment where Ana’s lips met Moira’s wet pussy and Moira screamed once more, she knew that she would need to ride this out and wait.

And so they burned together.

XXXXX

Morning came like a dream.  They were wrapped up in each other, naked and intertwined, their bodies clasped against each other and hidden away from the world in her bed.

Moira watched her…lover?  Could she call her that now?  The thought made her heart race all by itself, and her stomach felt a type of anxious that didn’t bring her dread.  No, instead she was felt with some type of _hope_ for the first time in a long time.  How odd.

She watched her sleep, her face peaceful as it lay on top of Moira.   Ana Amari was beautiful- she was everything Moira had ever desired. The woman was perfect and yet, entirely imperfect, and yet Moira had no need to quantify this.

She had it all in her hands, and she trembled as she realized that for once, she felt… complete, in a sense.  She had no need for more, she had all she needed right here.

When she woke up, she would tell her everything, tell her how her and Reyes’ poor decision making and inability to back track to safer territory had gotten them both stuck, and how they were changing in ways neither of them liked but neither could they control.  When Ana woke up Moira would spill her heart out and release that beast she had sought to control from the first moment it had started demanding more when she’d been in her twenties and had first seen Ana Amari on her television, dressed in blue.

There was movement, and Moira closed her eyes, not wanting to give her the impression that she was ‘creepy,’ something McCree so often accused her of being.

For a long moment, nothing happened.  Moira didn’t like how tense the body on her own was, nor how she pulled away as carefully as she could.  She gathered her stuff in silence, the rustling giving Moira reason to open her eyes and stare.

Ana was in the process of putting on her coat, when Moira finally found the courage in her to speak.  “Ana…” She murmured, brow creased, dread growing inside her, all those feelings she had been feeling crashing back down on her like she was coming down off her high.

“This was a mistake.”  Was all Ana said, her breath caught in her chest, and Moira was entirely helpless to just watch her go, her actions harried as she left the room, the door closing behind her passively.

Moira sat there in the dark, left alone on her bed as the rising sun chased away any doubts about what this had been.  She had been left, had been _used_.

She put her face into her hands, and sobbed, the sound foreign and strange to her.

In all her years of life, she had thought herself above things like this.  Things like tears and hurt and other people’s approval or disapproval. She had never needed anyone, never wanted anyone near her.  They all had already pushed her out and distrusted her from the start.

Moira was alone as she felt the raw emotions of it, so atypical to herself racked her chest and threatened to choke her.  She had been used to bring temporary comfort to Ana, and she had thought she had finally gotten what she’d wanted. Her face and hands were wet and she was cold and vulnerable and alone.

Who would be there for her now?  Who could she go to now?

Who would help her now?

The sun rose, uncaring to her affliction and pain as all things made of light were, just as Ana Amari was, and with it, the dream ended.

XXXXX

The next night, Moira returned to their secret place, only to be met by silence and a cold stove.  She heated her water in silence, the grief of her beating heart making more noise than anything else.

Did she want Ana to come to her at midnight?  Did she _want_ to see her?

She was left reeling, the withdrawal left her skin frozen in all those places that Ana had touched, her damned _heart_ beating frantically from the strain, her lips practically turning blue in the face of her newfound loneliness.

The kettle boiled, and Moira let it scream with all those emotions she couldn’t force herself to express aloud, where everybody could see her, judge her.

Nobody came.  The choice was removed, and Moira was left undisturbed.  Her face grew wet without her permission, and she choked on the realization that what she wanted, really, would never be hers to have.

Wiping her eyes, removed it from the stovetop, and poured herself a cup with her shaking hand, hot water spilling over the countertop.  She cared not, adding her teabag and her tea, and leaving the kitchen in a rush, her steps erratic and her miserable heart struggling against this, leaving her gasping for air.

XXXXX

The solution to all her problems came upon a midnight clear.

She found herself building the perfect sniper for Talon, the Widowmaker sitting calmly on her exam table, in her secret lab off base.

The woman had become perfect at Moira’s hand.  In accordance to Talon’s desires and her own inklings about how to complete her, she had removed all traces of her hesitance.

Widowmaker had still been so hurt by her own actions against the caring man that Gérard had been, before Talon had forced her hand.  And so Moira had taken it upon herself to remove those things holding her back from reaching her best self.

No longer was she burdened by her own heartbeat; and now that her heart no longer burdened her, she had managed to forge herself a new path forward as well.

With trembling hands, Moira realized this had clear corollaries to her relationship with Ana.  As she gave Widowmaker her treatment to assist in the deadening of her emotions, Moira wrote herself and Reyes the same prescriptions.

It was time to achieve their own evolution as well.  With no hesitation, and nothing to keep holding them back.

XXXXX

The next shipment of medications and chemicals and materials she ordered included an electric kettle.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” She offered Gabriel, who shrugged, seeming listless.  Quietly, she handed him a bottle of pills that he took without thinking about it or asking what, exactly, they were.

“Not really, I’ll take instant coffee if you have any.”  He breathed out black smoke.

“I don’t, I’m afraid.”

“Ah.  Shame.”  Gabriel shrugged again, downing a pill at Moira’s discretion.  He slumped into her couch, rubbing his face.

“I’m sorry that McCree is still…being difficult.” She admitted, quiet.  “He’s having the same trouble you were, coming to terms with…losing that much time.”

“I’m sorry about whatever the fuck happened with Ana and you.”  Gabriel muttered, deflecting. “I woke up and you were in a worse mood than I’ve ever felt from you.”

Moira put the kettle on countertop, fingers tracing the base as she contemplated that.  “I cannot help that.” Her voice was low. “I can only move forward. She made her decision.  I was only foolish to think I hadn’t made mine yet.”

Gabriel sighed quietly, seeming just as uncertain about their future. _‘Talon’s crawling in Blackwatch,’_ He thought at her, eyes locked on hers.   _‘I know that isn’t exactly a bad thing considering what we are now, but I don’t know when it happened.’_

 _‘I’ve noticed them as well.’_  Moira agreed mentally, taking the plug into her hand, lifting the base off the countertop.   _‘I don’t know if I want to know when they joined us.’_

 _‘Overwatch’s story is ending.’_ Gabriel acknowledged, the thoughts overly heavy.   _‘They’re standing in the way of the future, the good of humanity.  They’ve accomplished what they were meant to do. But…its death throes aren’t easy for me to watch.’_

_‘Then we know what we must do, Gabriel.’_

Without a second left to regret her choices, she plugged it into her quarters, and settled in for the night with Gabriel at her side, taking her pill with her cup of tea.

XXXXX

Things just seemed to continue to get worse.  It was like one thing would hit them not too long after they’d almost gotten over the one before.

Moira had left that space where she was willing to seek out, now she was growing more inwards on herself.  Gabriel was still trying, admittedly, it as almost noble of him watching him struggle as every interaction with an irate Morrison built up that thing growing inside him like a parasitic shadow of himself.

They were all attending some sort of party tonight, Moira knew.  She slunk around in the darkness looking for an easy meal, when she came across a familiar face doing the same.

“Where are you off to, exactly, Genji?”  Moira asked, arms folded as she stared after his form.

Genji breathed in quietly.  “McCree has made his…feelings perfectly clear, for once.”  He said with just a hint of bitter sarcasm, staring towards her.  “Overwatch has asked that I form a team with their newer members. Tracer and Winston could use someone like me, and after they complete their training as a unit with me, it should…be good.”

“You’re leaving Blackwatch, then?”  Moira was surprised, but perhaps not as much as she should have been.  “Interesting. So you’re also looking for Gabriel, then.” She sighed, looking away.  “I am…sorry, for what has happened with McCree. A similar incident has…occurred in my own life.”

“The captain seemed stressed.”  Genji tacitly brought up her own…feelings, as much a curse as they were.

“So did McCree.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, before Moira sighed, deciding to offer him a hand in figuring out what it was he wanted.  “If you want me to hand off your letter of resignation to Gabriel…I’m happy to do so. You’re going to Zurich, and later…to Numbani, right?”

Genji handed her the papers, neatly encased in a business envelope.  “Tell commander Reyes that I’m sorry.” He implored, red eyes seeking out hers.  “And take care of him.”

Red and anger and hurt and metal and all that composed that form walked through the door and left them all, then.   

Moira only wished that she had other options, and could walk out with him as well.  If not with him, then after him, only desiring to leave here.

She stared at his fading form, and reached into her pocket, taking her pills in tandem with Reyes, quietly informing him of this new loss, putting his resignation into her inner coat pocket and fading to the side as Gabriel seethed in his disappointment and ever-growing hatred of what Overwatch continually took from him.

 _‘Some day soon, Gabriel, we’ll take it all from them.’_ Moira reminded him, sating that growing beast inside her Reaper.   _‘They’ll all pay, one day soon.  We’ll take from them. They’ll never even see it coming.’_

XXXXX

It was yet another sorry day for Blackwatch when there were only 3 people in Gabriel’s office, finishing reports for Jack and Ana’s mission into Poland.  Moira kept finding herself in unintentional staring contests with Jesse, the man making faces at her. She thought of Genji leaving for Numbani.

“Pity the ninja left to deal with Doomfist.”  She taunted lowly, her voice cool and collected.  “He could help by slicing through this mess.”

“Moira, Jesse, shut up.”  Gabriel grunted, face down in his work.

“Hey now, I wasn’t sayin’ nothin,” McCree argued back, brow furrowed.

“You were thinking about what to say.”  Gabriel idly responded, wholly ignoring Jesse’s indignant outburst.  “Genji’s not here. We’ve established this. We can’t do anything about that.  We have to focus on now containing blowback. I don’t know about you, but it feels pretty convenient that we’re finally able to catch Doomfist.  That intelligence feels too good.”

“Finally recognizing our intelligence has been lacking, Commander?”  Moira frostily asked, and Jesse grumbled in discontent.

Moira and Gabriel met each others eyes.  They both knew what had happened, but…it felt good, at least, to know that Doomfist was taken care of for the world.  They both knew that he undoubtedly had plans underway but…it wasn’t like they wanted to start a new Omnic crisis. Their relationship to Talon was one of necessity.

 

Gabriel would keep working against them as long as he could.

“Just wondering.  Nothing concrete yet.  Ever since we lost Lacroix, some things have improved.  I know for a fact that Gérard wasn’t Talon. But…something’s up.  There has to be blowback coming.”

“There is.” Jesse muttered. “The trial, Gabriel.  How we were completely exposed. How we’re all sitting here like a bunch of schmucks in a shit office in Zurich rather than our old stomping grounds in Rome.”

Gabriel grumbled in discontent. “No, Jesse, that was blowback for my actions against Antonio, and for your actions during the Uprising in London.”  He pointed out flatly. “Doomfist was caught. Plain and simple, we know he’s a major player in Talon, its strange we were just now able to catch him while Overwatch is under more fire than ever.  It’s not even helping Jack that much, either. That’s weird.”

Moira tapped her fingers against the wooden table, looking up in thought.  “That does seem odd. You would imagine imprisoning a reviled figure such as Doomfist would help put Overwatch back into a good light.”

Jesse shrugged, breathing in disappointment.  “I’m not all that shocked. Public opinion of the Strike Commander’s been on the down and out for a while.  Not to mention, he’s still ‘protecting’ illegal and immoral assets like ourselves.” He gestured around the room.  “Genji got a makeover and he was able to safely dip, we’re all just kinda fucked.”

“Impeccable logic, as ever, McCree,” Moira sassed carefully, and Gabriel sighed.

“McCree’s got one thing right, we’re just kinda fucked.”  Gabriel shook his head in upset. “And then there’s this mission to Poland.”  Gabriel clapped the papers before them. Moira just arched a brow at the mild outburst.  “This feels wrong too.”

“It does feel odd that the scientists have been safe, but unable to leave.”  Moira agreed, looking over the details again. “Think Talon’s planning something?”

Jesse nodded, looking between the two of them and sighing.  “It’s less about thinking that and more about knowing they are, and wondering what the hell their plan’s gonna fuckin’ be.”

XXXXX

If McCree knew how right he was, well.  Moira would never hear the end of it from her jail cell.

They were finishing up their reports, and she had one final task to take.  She took her pills absently, and pulled up a document to start pouring details about the upcoming mission.

She titled the report thusly, knowing that Talon’s plans were going to be formed from this report- that her Widowmaker would follow her instructions written here.

11/03/70 REPORT.  FOR: AGENT LACROIX

Moira didn’t hesitate as she spilled out all the details of the case, knowing with a heart rapidly going numb that this would likely spell the end of Ana Amari.

XXXXX

That day finally came.

Where Jack Morrison’s team came back.

And Ana Amari was nowhere amongst them.

Moira wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral.  She was not invited, neither family, nor friend- to anyone’s knowledge.  Their late night meetings were secrets to all of them.

A voice spoke to her- one that Moira recognized but didn’t want to face yet.

Another traitor from within their ranks, it seemed.

“Lacroix is performing extensively well.”  They praised. “Maximilian wished to thank you for your contributions to Talon.  They’re expecting great things from you.”

A noise came from behind her, and then the traitor turned and left, their footsteps fading as he left her quarters.  Moira didn’t turn around until he had entirely left the room, and her eyes widened at the sight of what it was that he’d left for her.

On the floor, in many broken pieces, was none other than Ana’s kinamura. The scope was utterly destroyed.  Her creation had shot Amari through the scope of her own gun. She was not only talented, but apparently…a show off.

The gun was here, but…what about Amari?

Moira’s chest ached resoundingly, and she felt at that broken piece of equipment in both her hands and in herself, and she stared towards the hall empty and devoid of answers.  She rubbed the broken foreign thing in her chest and wished that Lacroix could do the same to her- just put her out of her misery, disappear her into the night. It wasn’t as though Moira would be missed by anyone, really.

In a daze, she stood, and wandered to the kitchen; time feeling like it was falling onto her like hot wax.   She didn’t have to go there anymore, not really. But this was a needed step for her- for moving on past whatever had cursed her.  It was time for her own treatment, the one she had herself and Reyes start together.

These pesky emotions were getting in both of their ways.  They knew what they had to do to survive. And Moira knew that meant she had to give Reyes that push just as he had given _her_ all these months ago.

She poured herself that single glass, and didn’t wait for anyone else to wander in.  Not that anyone else _would_.  No one else would have ever sought her out- and the only one who ever had was gone.

She had accepted her fate.  No one would come for her- no one would save her.  Her only solution to this scenario was to do what she knew she must.

Moira took those two white pills with her hot tea, boiled for one, and wished to reach inside and rip it out, once and for all- if only to cease its useless struggle against what she had to do.  She drank that tea, feeling it burn at her throat and her insides and hope that she could eliminate it once and for all.

XXXXX

That night, she was her at her lab, performing the necessary maintenance on her Widowmaker.

“I have taken her spot from her.”  Lacroix informed, seeming proud of that achievement.  That dark glint of enjoyment coursed through her creation.  “I was told they brought you her gun.”

She nodded absently.  “They did, in fact bring me the gun.”  She murmured, checking Lacroix’s vitals listlessly, pondering the gun that sat in pieces on her desk in the other room.

Moira finally almost felt _empty_ , just as they’d made Lacroix out to be.  She was a blank canvas and now she could create _art_ where once there was flaws and hesitation.

It was time for her to let go of the aching _thing_ in her chest and embrace the new _her_.

“Congratulations on becoming better than the best, Lacroix.”  Moira murmured to her patient sitting across from her, the shadows of Blackwatch ever growing around her.  The number of Talon soldiers had continually increased. It wasn’t like anyone else was there for Reyes, and McCree would be gone soon enough.  Talon had yet to tell her of its plans, but she knew her conclusion was coming soon.

And for Moira to be perfect, she had to be rid of that aching, resisting monster in her chest once and for all.

“You’re better than she ever was, you know.”  Moira murmured, the words bitter, a hand trailing through her creation’s, her magnum opus’ hair.  It had grown significantly since she had begun, a side effect of using pieces of her and Reyes’ genetic modifications that she had managed to isolate.  It created such a beautiful creation, one who was fast as lightning and had no need of any of these feelings.

Widowmaker’s rich amber eyes glowed, and Moira sought to erase all thought of their more serious counterparts that they so reminded her of.

Lacroix would be better than _her_ in every regard- Moira would ensure that.

The purest weapon was a sniper- the _perfect_ weapon was a sniper.

That was because they acted just like a chemical reaction; you aimed, and you shot, and then someone would be dead on the ground in the distance.  Ana had left her in pieces on the floor, where Lacroix had left her gun in pieces and a body picked up and packaged away in some bag in a forgotten morgue.  She was much more efficient and so much less judgmental of whatever sin Moira had originally committed against the world.

It wasn’t a bloody, tragic affair, like Moira’s form shivering, quivering pathetically on the bed.  In fact, it had only taken seconds to eliminate the problem at its source, as her creation was built custom to always achieve that.

Lacroix hadn’t missed her mark, and thus she took a knife to that creature in Moira’s chest and stabbed it dead, quantitatively eviscerating it from her chest and leaving her numb.

No longer was she to be held accountable to it.

It was time for their new methodology to come into full force.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”  
> \- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are! Again, thanks so much for reading my work and I really hope you enjoyed it. please feel free to hit me up on my twitter @harmicist to yell at me, or you could yell at me here. I'm fine with either really, if you want to!
> 
> Once again, nsfw warning here. Be sure to read the end note carefully. There might be extra information relevant to whatever I might want to do in the future for these two. I had a lot of fun though, writing this!

In typical Blackwatch fashion, there was only one way to end it all.

Decisively,  _ explosively _ even. 

Well.  Perhaps that was hitting the nail a little too hard on the head, given that she had just been the target of another investigation looking into who, exactly, had blown up the Swiss base altogether. 

But that was why she was here, now.

She ripped off another piece of tape, and with it taped shut a brown cardboard box with another set of her things in it.  This one had her Blackwatch gear in it, and it was definitely past time to close the lid on that part of her life. 

That wasn’t the only thing she was ridding herself of.  In almost all of these boxes, there were all those things she’d had devoted to Ana.  It included everything, from boxes of tea they’d both liked and had together, to those posters of hers she’d dutifully collected over the years. 

It was time to cut herself off entirely.  She’d mostly succeeded in going cold turkey, but with the explosion necessitating a move from this location…well.  She figured it was time to entirely go clean. 

She would almost consider this spring-cleaning, but in reality it was probably closer to what happened when there had been a drought in a forest, and a fire was long overdue.  It was time for her to rid herself of this petty image of  _ home _ . 

She didn’t particularly desire to set anything else alight, as she had almost been caught in the blast herself. 

She hadn’t, but her patient couldn’t say that he had been so lucky.  

Her Reaper sat on her couch, mask covered with a single bloodied handprint.  He’d yet to speak to her as Gabriel, but he since finally returned to her in these days following the explosion.  Where else would he have gone? It wasn’t as though there were places left in this world for him, just as there weren’t any for herself.  He breathed in, and out, and his neck moved carefully. 

Figuring that she had given him enough time to collect himself, she stood from her place on the floor, amongst the boxes, and walked passed him to get a wet towel from the kitchen.  “Are you in there, Reyes?” She asked as she returned, sitting before him and stroking the bone white mask with a finger. 

He breathed, the sound ghostly and painful.  She lifted the cloth and began to wipe down his mask, not yet willing to remove it and see what damage had been done.  The blood didn’t yet lift itself- it was well and truly dried. However, the remnants of the fire and the grit of the base itself came off.  “I suppose not.” She murmured when she still didn’t get an answer. “Seems the explosion shook you up. I wouldn’t have imagined otherwise, but…  I certainly didn’t see it coming, and I was far closer to the exit than you were, and my powers better suited for a quick escape.”

“Was it us?”  Reaper’s voice wisped into the air with black smoke pouring out of his mouth.  Moira couldn’t quite place if it was Reyes or programming yet, though, which was…odd, to say the least.  Following the whole incident, their mental bond felt like a limb that was asleep- numb and yet tingling with anticipation and horror.

Moira was silent for a moment, before she shrugged. “Hard to say.  I can’t imagine that it  _ wasn’t _ Talon but…”

“But they didn’t tell you about it.”  Reaper finished lowly, cracking his neck into place audibly.  “ _ Hnn,  _ figures.  Morrison accused me of being behind it.”

“They say he died there.”  Moira explained, tapping her fingers.  “But they said you had as well, so that shows how  _ thorough _ they were in their search.”

“Mm…  I didn’t see his body in the rubble…and we’d been fighting.  He wouldn't have been too far away from me had he perished beside me.”  Reaper rasped, sizing Moira up, suddenly seeming suspicious. “How did you get out unscathed?”  He gestured around. “With so much of your things…”

She raised a brow, before she pulled out a forgotten, lonely poster.  Moira unrolled it with careful, fearful reverence. As her fingers manipulated the waxed poster, Ana’s youthful face along with a slogan was uncovered, and she trembled in delight as she realized she felt  _ nothing _ at the sight.  She had finally completed  _ herself _ . 

“I took it upon myself to rid my quarters of these materials ages ago.”  She explained. “I figured I was going to be fired by Morrison, so purchasing an apartment wasn’t remiss. The only things really here are my pet rabbit and these sort of sentimental things I’ve not had any use for.”   She dropped the poster back into the box, and it rolled back up hastily, mirroring her own lack of care. “Now, the only thing of my research I got out was a single flash drive with our information on it and whatever Talon has.  Which, granted, is a lot.”

“Think they tried to get rid of us?”

“Hard to say.”  Moira murmured, finally removing the mask and sizing Gabriel’s injuries up.  She cupped his face carefully, dabbing at the blood and black that oozed from his marred face.  “It really did a number on you. Your condition doesn’t seem to be taking care of it.”

“Wouldn’t expect it to.”  He muttered. “That’d be too helpful.”

Moira rolled her eyes as she pushed the hoodie back and began to tap disinfectant ointment over the more obvious burns.  “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“No thanks to  _ Morrison _ ,” He rasped with displeasure. 

“Hmm. The fight, then.”  She prompted, curious. “I knew Talon wanted you to, how did it go?”

“I hadn’t wanted to do it- murdering him seemed too harsh a punishment.  He was corrupt, sure, so sure of his power, but…considering old time’s sake.  How long we’d been together, how much we’d gone through together.” He muttered.  “But Jack forced my hand. He always rushes in before thinking, its why he needed myself and Ana.  He attacked and I defended, before he accused it of being my fault. We fought until the whole place blew out from beneath our feet.  Got me caught in the flames for it.” He coughed up smoke and sludge, which Moira wiped from the edge of his lip.

“Did he show any signs of your condition?”  Moira asked, well aware that exposure to such stressful conditions could force the gene to activate, in simplistic terms. 

Gabriel’s lip curled, and his deep black eyes glowed red at their center.  “ _ No _ .” He forced out from within the smoke and fiery anger, his hands balling into fists.

Moira held his chin in her hands, and twisted his head from side to side.  She assumed this was all the Reaper program; until he pulled himself away, coughing again.  “I thought you said you weren’t big on manhandling me.” He muttered, and Moira felt her brow rise in shock.

“Are you Gabriel Reyes,” She asked, before he waved a hand. 

“I think it’s more complicated than that now.” He said, looking to his hands.  “I don’t know where I begin or end. Or what or  _ who _ I am.  Just that I am.  More importantly I know that someone has betrayed us.  Has used me, used you.”

“So you do not think that I am the traitor.” Moira murmured, sitting as Gabriel-Reaper- muddled through his thoughts. 

He looked at her and snorted.  “You, no.” He waved his hand again.  “I’ve felt your thoughts, been in them, soaked and absorbed them.  You work for me, with me,  _ as _ me.  This wasn’t your doing.  It goes deeper than that, all the way to the very bones of this decrepit organization, this decrepit  _ world _ .”  He snarled. “It’s used us and thrown us away, made us its villains.  And for what? Humans are as terrible as we’ve always been. It will all happen again, and again, into infinity.”

“We could follow our once noble leaders ideas.”  Moira suggested. “Before he was captured, he was all about…evolving.  I myself can see that…we’re on the brink of something wonderful- imagine what humanity could do with such a jump forward- what you or I could do with it?”

“I take it, then, that you’ll continue working for Talon.”  Reaper muttered, tapping his fingers on the table as he thought it over. 

“They provide the funds.  I don't care one way or another how my discoveries are used once they’re on the market.  What matters is the  _ knowledge _ .”  She said, holding her hands out wide in delight.  “The knowledge will be more important than any petty squabble or ruined reputation in my lifetime.  The world has already turned its back on me, on  _ us _ .  Talon has the means to offer  _ us _ the path forward.”  She offered him her hand.  “Neither of us have anywhere else to go now, Gabriel.  They’ve announced your death, and left your legacy a disgrace, your operatives entirely defunct, and Blackwatch members subject to investigation and worse.  Your condition is stable for the time being, but I will continue working to perfect our cure for it. To once more grant you that control you so long ago lost.”

“They’ve gone after members of Blackwatch?”  Gabriel asked, seeming shocked at the idea. “Why?”

Moira shrugged, handing him her clearance from the local authorities.  “Apparently they believe  _ you _ and Blackwatch were the ones to lay the explosives, Gabriel.”  She stepped back, letting Gabriel process that information as that link between them cleared and she could comfortably relax her thoughts.

“McCree too?”  Gabriel sensed from her, dumbfounded by that particular imprint of the news in her mind.  “He left ages ago though, the  _ ingrate _ .  But…I would have figured that would have been public…”

“It wasn’t.” Moira gravely informed.  “Someone’s running a targeted campaign to destroy Blackwatch… for good.  I’m only lucky enough to have been entirely cleared, given that the red tape around me had gotten so thick I was practically exonerated from having any part in the explosions.”

“The U.N.  And the U.S.”  Gabriel growled.  “They used  _ me _ for years, gave me the tough jobs!  For years, I followed every order and did  _ anything _ I had to do to keep the world safe- at a severe cost to myself.”

“And in return you break down because of their work and they have no answers for you but a heavily redacted piece of paper and a smear campaign following your presumed demise.”  Moira finished his thoughts, sitting down amongst her boxes once more. “And they say it was all for the greater good.”

“What is it that I fought for all this time then?”  Gabriel looked to the ceiling, her papers so dully clearing her name following the aggressive campaign almost slipping from his tenuous grasp.  “Who did I do all those things for?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Gabriel.”  Moira tapped her nails as she began placing her things into their boxes once more.  “They put our guardian Angel in as the temporary head of Overwatch, while all this blows over.  I’ve no idea when I’m to be fired, but I’m sure it’s coming soon.” She rolled her eyes. 

“Feh.  I doubt it will.”  Gabriel smoked lightly in annoyance, and she could feel him probing her memories.  “She’s likely using you as a contact for any Blackwatch agents who want to negotiate.”  He muttered. “Maybe she thinks you know where Jesse is.”

“Grand, I get to keep my paycheck still.”  Moira snorted, tone sarcastic. “Not that I need it, considering Talon’s support, but it keeps my appearance legitimate just a tad longer.”

“Hng.”  Gabriel flopped back against the couch, crossing his arms and looking toward the ceiling.  “Guess I’ll stay here then.” He finished lamely as Moira placed her final poster into the box she had been working on. 

“We won’t be here for long, Gabriel, don’t fret.”  Moira carefully folded the cardboard box’s lid, and pressed her packing tape against it, sealing it off once and for all.  “I’ll alert Maximilian that you’ve thankfully  _ not _ perished as the news reported, I’m sure they’ll find quick use for your skills.”

“He skeeves me out.” Gabriel muttered.  “Dunno how you can stand him.”

“He’s  _ refined.”  _ Moira disagreed, rolling her eyes as she stood, carrying her box and placing it amongst all the others, leaving it in the forgotten crevices of her home, herself where all those useless sentimentalities belonged.  “Beggars can’t be choosers, unless you’re willing to go deal with Doomfist on his merry way to prison, or make a return to Venice.”

“Not particularly.”  He rubbed a blackened, clawed hand over his face, pondering their semi burnt nature and the smoke that rose off the tips of his talons that were no longer what one could call fingernails.  “No, Maximilian’s fine- he can at least resist the urge for chitchat. Vialli’s terrible.” 

“Mmm, his urge to gloat and comment about the irony of the situation would drive me mad anyways.”  Moira mumbled, opening up another empty cardboard box to continue packing away those things she had once considered her home.

“Wouldn't I be the one dealing with him?”  Gabriel asked, tilting his head at he while he squinted. 

“I have to as well by proxy.”  Moira reminded. “Don’t forget that we’re intertwined, Gabriel.  Not to mention inevitably when you threaten him he’ll call me to tell me he wants you on a tighter leash.”

Gabriel picked up his bloodied mask, and stared at it hopelessly for a long moment.  “They really left me there, didn’t they?” He murmured, touching his own bloody fingerprint.  “To die, to  _ suffer _ …” He seemed listless, without purpose.  Gabriel needed something to fill that growing void inside him.  “They all left me there.”

Moira nodded, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.  “Don’t worry, this isn’t how our story ends Gabriel.” She stared intently into his eyes. 

_ ‘We will get our revenge yet.’ _

XXXXX

Not even a year after the explosion that had rocked the base, Moira was busier than ever.  Doomfist was in jail, and Vishkar was busy moving into Rio in Brazil. Maximilian couldn’t be bothered to leave his casino most of the time, and that meant that the capitalists among them ran amok.

Vialli was amongst the worst of such persons; both she and Reaper knew that. 

Overwatch was still roiling with tensions, and being held together by strings made up of the hope of children and adults who might as well be children.  Reading the works of Olympia Shaw in the aftermath of Zurich was quite something. She was a hopeless fanatic for Jack Morrison, someone that Reaper hated, and what he hated invariably bled into Moira. 

In spite of Reaper thinking he’d almost certainly survived the blast, there wasn’t any miraculous bursting out of the shadows for him.  No, there was only quiet as the old vanguard faded and became mercenaries or vigilantes, and the organization itself began to crumble away. 

Reaper had decided to grace her with his presence, and he reminded her that they both needed to eat.  Moira absently agreed, and so she decided to go pick up dinner for them both. Unfortunately, it was rather late, and therefore there were…technical difficulties finding open restaurants that delivered.  So she would have to go find somewhere herself. 

“I’ll call you when I want you to put water on for me, alright, Reyes?”  She prompted, and he shrugged, picking up her video game controller and turning on her machine.

And that was how Moira found herself at a seedy bar in Zurich, drinking whiskey and waiting for the kitchen to put together whatever food they had on hand. 

“I wouldn’t have taken you to be the type of person to come here.”  An unfortunately familiar accused, and Moira’s head whipped around to see the form of none other than Angela Ziegler, arms crossed. 

“I’m not- and I didn’t think you were either.”  She returned dryly, prompting Dr. Ziegler to arch a blonde eyebrow in disbelief. 

“Normally I wouldn’t be.” Angela groused, sitting next to Moira and ordering a beer in lazy French.  “Unfortunately, circumstances drove me to this moment.”

“Then you know why I’m here too.”  Moira gave her non-answer, and the good doctor seemed riled up by just this. 

“That doesn’t answer anything.”  She said crossly, brow furrowed in displeasure.

Moira gave her a cool stare, refusing to be caught up in her pathetic outburst.  “Am I obligated to answer you?” She asked, picking up her glass and taking a sip to steel herself. 

“ _ Yes _ ,” Angela stressed, her blue eyes hard and her expression tense.  “You never did anything with  _ anyone _ , it was weird to everyone how you just stuck to yourself and didn’t have any friends or anyone who liked you to  _ any  _ degree.  And yet on the one fucking night I want to be away from work, I walk here and find  _ you _ .”  The disgust in her voice was absolutely a palpable thing, and the bartender seemed shocked by the outburst as well. 

“I didn’t have anyone there because of  _ you _ , Dr. Ziegler.”  Moira calmly stated, not making eye contact.  “From the start, I was reviled. Blackwatch hardly understood me; I was a scientist amongst a secret ops organization.  And furthermore, my name had just been so completely discredited even their scientists didn’t want to come close enough to so much as poke me with a 10 foot pole.”

Ziegler reeled back at the accusation. “ _ Me _ ?” She was beside herself, and Moira finally rolled her eyes and met her gaze head on. 

“Yes, you.” She said lazily, taking another sip of whiskey.  “We both know that in spite of whatever reserves you had about my methods, my work was never fraudulent. And that was what most people were really afraid of me for.”  She explained. “I was considered a crook, of course no rational scientist wanted to be associated with me. So yes, I’m here alone, because I did have people, but unfortunately, they’re dead.”

Angela stared at her, the fires in her eyes only somewhat dimmed by how plainly Moira explained her lack of presence on base. 

Thankfully, Moira didn’t have to explain herself, and she just ordered another drink.  The good doctor got hers, and seemed successfully cowed by Moira laying out her sin for her. 

They sat in mutual silence for what only felt like a minute, before Angela broke it again. 

“Who did you lose?”  She asked, testy, but apparently trying to calm down the bartender, who seemed stressed at her earlier outburst. 

Moira debated the merits of answering her, swirling her whiskey about in its glass, before she decided to indulge the woman.  It was very fun seeing her so angry, so outraged at Moira’s presence. It didn't fix any of their history, but it was fun seeing her reconcile with all these things now, when there was no real ability to make up for them.

“I had Gabriel, of course.” She stated plainly.  “My closest friend, and my boss. I was his primary doctor, I was assisting him in areas you would have failed him.”  She explained coolly. “I refuse to believe he took part in whatever took down our base. That wasn’t like him.” She waved her free hand.  “And then there was…well, my complicated  _ thing _ with Ana.  I had thought we were…becoming close, but, well.  She and I had a fling, and apparently she regretted it in the aftermath.”  Moira finished her whiskey after she said that, and placed the empty glass on the bar.  “And she died only a few weeks later, so it wasn’t like we had a chance to talk about that.”

It was definitely funny to watch Dr. Ziegler’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets from the revelation.  Moira couldn’t help the smirk that formed on her face, the edges of her lips curling in delight as Angela had to come to terms with the fact that not only did Moira get close to Ana Amari, but they had  _ fucked _ .

Her face was bright red and she was practically shaking from the shock.  Her stupid face looked up and their gazes met, and Moira couldn’t help the laugh that came from a deep, extremely self-satisfied place in her hollow chest. 

Angela froze, and with it, Moira froze as well.  She looked about ready to burst, and when she did, Moira wasn’t prepared.

“I’m going to wipe that fucking look off your face  _ myself _ .” Angela hissed, but instead of getting a punch to the nose, Moira was shocked as Angela pulled her into a desperate kiss that tasted like whiskey and bad life choices. 

It wasn’t a bad sensation, in fact, it was rather good- Moira was quite shocked by that, but she wasn’t going to say no to a quick release of endorphins to ease her stress.  “I’d like to see you try.” She taunted between needy kisses, making Angela groan, and the petite doctor pulled Moira by her necktie to the bathroom to the sounds of hooting and hollering from the staff and the other patrons. 

The two of them arrived there in a tangled tango, and Angela pressed her into a wall, which left Moira rather amused until she pushed her to her knees.  “You’re not going to use your fingers on me.” Angela said decisively, eyes hard as she gripped Moira’s hair tight in one of her hands. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing this my way, agreed?” 

Moira was breathless for a moment, but when the woman’s grip on her hair tightened and almost threatened to release, Moira nodded.  “A-Agreed,” She said, voice mangled from the stunning arousal she felt at being manhandled by this. 

“Good.”

With that tense word, Angela dragged Moira to her feet, and unbuttoned her front, holding her by her necktie in a way that just barely threatened to choke her.  Once the buttons were undone, she pushed her hands beneath the bottom of her bra, feeling up her breasts in such a down and dirty way that made Moira pant and yet felt so scandalously delightful that she didn’t dare tell her to stop. 

How wonderful it felt to be what made Angela Ziegler break and give into her basest needs.  To bring that person that everyone considered an innocent angel and make her into just as much as an animal as anyone else. 

It was hardly that case of delicate mirroring that Moira and Ana had shared in the tenderness of the moonlight.  This was dirty and dimly lit under overly yellow lighting of a bathroom, and Moira had no false presumptions about what this was. 

Angela’s teeth bit into her breast, making her shout, and one of Angela’s hands went to her mouth to stop the noise from escaping.  The other fiddled with her pants and pushed them down off her hips, making her panties follow with another harried gesture. Angela put Moira’s necktie into her mouth, before she dropped to her knees.

Moira wasn’t an expert in these things, to any regard, but she was quite certain of one thing- this felt better than anything she had ever felt before, and she was quite sure that sex like this was the optimal thing. 

When they were said and done, perhaps 10 minutes later, Angela and herself dressed carefully. 

“The UN is passing a final resolution on us this month.”  Angela admitted, voice somewhat more relaxed now that she’d gotten that all out of her system.  “Overwatch will finally be shut down.”

Moira still felt blind from her orgasm, but she was so relaxed that she could hardly care.  “Mmm. Well, that’s unfortunate.” She murmured. “I’ll be out of a job then.”

Angela and her parted ways without pleasantries or beating around the bush. 

Moira arrived home a bit late, a bit disheveled, the food a bit cold, as she’d needed time to collect herself, and Gabriel was absolutely beside himself with laughter at her expense.  She felt strongly that she would never hear the end of this from him. 

The sole good thing to come out of it was that the very next day, still relaxed after such a good romp, she received an invitation from the scientific community of Oasis, asking that she join their ranks as their minister of Genetics. 

XXXXX

“Alright, at last, we’ve arrived.”  Moira stretched, feeling tired from having brought all those things on that long plane ride here.  She looked around as she excited the taxi, smirking towards her companion. “Finally, Gabriel, we have a new home base.”

“ _ You _ have a new home base, you mean.”  He reminded irately, seeming sour. 

Moira scoffed, patting his back.  “Wherever I am, you are always allowed.”  Moira responded airily. “I never took you for someone who could get  _ cranky _ , Gabriel.”

“I’m not cranky.  I’m just worn out.  Overwatch’s fall means that I’m working overtime for Talon.”  He groused, and Moira chuckled.

Her Reaper’s red eyes tried their best to burn their way into her skin, and Moira smirked at him, opening up the door of her new lavish home.  The outer room was a living room, and it opened out towards a garden, complete with a pond. She whistled, folding her arms graciously. “Well, this is rather picturesque.”  She murmured, dragging her suitcases inside. She eagerly noted that her boxes had already been brought here.

“That’s convenient.”  Reaper sourly agreed, black smoke leaking off him.  He was itching to get out. “I have an assignment to get done.”

“Be back in two hours time.”  Moira reminded. “We have treatments to get started on, you’re overdue.”

XXXXX

She was setting up her new home, feeling a resounding emptiness in her chest.  She checked the clock on her wall, and groused as it showed that yet again, Gabriel was late for his treatments.  Damn Talon for keeping her Reaper so busy these days.

She understood that now they’ve reached the end of Overwatch’s desperate struggles, Reaper had a better opportunity than ever to work, but Gabriel should keep in mind that he was still a work in progress- and if he wanted to  _ live _ fully, he would have to continue to come here on time. 

There was a knock at the front entrance, and Moira groused as she put on her slippers, walking on the marble flooring to meet him. “Come in,” she told him belatedly, putting on her lab coat to get ready for work.  She checked her files as he opened the door, trying to put on the air that she hadn’t been waiting for him. 

“You’re late,” She commented dryly without looking up from her work.

“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to meet you,” Dr. Ziegler’s voice answered her irate scolding, sounding somewhat amused.  Moira about fell over at her, looking towards the woman in shock. Angela gave her a smile just shy of friendly, holding a bouquet of flowers.  “Expecting someone, Dr. O’Deorain?”

Moira stood frozen for a moment longer, before she coughed to clear her shocked expression from her face, attempting to save face.  “I am, as it happens, but as you might suspect, they’re late.” She informed, keeping her tone light, if similarly tense. “What brings the good doctor around,” She dryly asked, raising an eyebrow, well aware that they had left on a…tense note.  “You’ve made quite the effort to avoid me after our…illicit affair.”

Angela gave her a flat look, before sighing.  She seemed to gather up her gumption, before she spoke.  “I’m  _ aware _ , and that was…wrong of me.”  She had to almost bite that out through her teeth. 

Moira had to bite her tongue not to taunt her about it being so hard for her to admit that it was even possible for their beloved angel to be wrong.  This was already a tense enough encounter that it didn’t need any commentary for her. She wanted to see how, exactly, this would play out. 

“I am here with these to apologize for my…poor behavior.”  She thrusted the bouquet towards Moira, huffing. “I’m well aware that we might not have ever seen eye to eye on many issues, but if since we have both been invited here, to this city, well, I find it silly to let old politics rule.”  She forced herself to say. “I doubt I’ll be here long, but… while I am here, I’d like to not always be fighting with you.”

With a second’s hesitation, Moira took the flowers, clasping them awkwardly.  She then set them down carefully. Suspicious of her intentions, she leered at the woman.  “Alright, well, this really is something. You’ve had a sudden change of heart, then?”

Angela made a face. “Not quite.”  She gave Moira an equally distrustful look, glancing her over again.  “This is just an attempt to find a compromise between us. I’m unfortunately certain that we’re going to be…forced to work together at some point.  And I’d prefer it if we weren’t always at each other’s throats.”

Moira tilted her head, crossing her arms before leaning backwards against her desk. Mmm, I think I’ve managed well on my own.”  She reminded. “I’m not quite as certain we’ll have to work together, but should we have to, I’m not opposed to being on neutral grounds with you.”

Angela nodded, seeming to relax as Moira let their…awkward history slide without another mention.  The woman sighed. “Additionally, with all the drama around the termination of Overwatch going on...you're the only one close.   Winston is caught up in the middle of it- they’re trying to figure out where, exactly he can go now.” Angela rubbed her temples.  “As you know, I was the de facto leader in that last year, and I’ve been asked my opinion for that, and I’m always so conflicted, since Winston wants to stay in Gibraltar with Athena.”

She sighed, closing her eyes in resignation.  “On the one hand, Winston believes in Overwatch so much that I worry that he’ll try to restart it at some point. And ultimately...it was shut down for a reason, perhaps its best it stay that way.”

Moira scoffed a little.  “You’re better off without them, doctor.  It’s best that it’s gone, in my opinion.”

Angela sighed again, folding her arms and using her thumb to rub her arm.  “Being free of it has done wonders for my stress lines, at least.” She jokingly remarked, trying to find some silver lining here. 

Moira let herself chuckle.  “Mm, well, regardless, its best not to meddle in that.”  She stood up and stretched. “I’m sure Dr. Winston will resolve the issue, so for your sake, Dr. Ziegler, I’d stay out of it.”

Angela looked at her oddly, seeming suspect of the slightly ominous word, but let it slide. 

She shifted from side to side, before continuing, coughing.  “These flowers are from Egypt, you know. They’re not too tricky to care for, I think.  I know that you can get…focused on your work and not pay too much attention to how much time’s passed.   I was the same, when Captain Amari gave some to me.” She explained, biting her lip. “Mine went up in flames in the explosion, and I’ve grown new ones, of course, but… Well, I know I miss her.  And, well I’ve spent some time thinking about what you said, that night.” Angela makes eye contact with her, and Moira tensed at the mention of  _ her. _

“Jesse did tell me some things, about you.  You weren't part of us for very long, and for my part in keeping you...out of the main group, I apologize.”  Her face practically strained at those words. “It was...petty of me.”

Moira relaxed, taking a sip from her teacup, having covertly splashed whiskey in it earlier.  “Don’t hurt yourself, Dr. Ziegler,” She joked, before looking down, hating being confronted with this.  “I imagine you two were close. I’m sure I can manage taking care of these, but… don’t blame yourself too much; it was not  _ you _ alone who kept me out.”  She cupped her teacup tight in her hands.  “It was the situation itself. And had Ana wanted me to join, well.  She could have just as easily let me in.”

Angela finally softened, getting some confirmation of… her true feelings seeming to awaken some additional humanity in her; that had been cut off before.  Moira hated it. “I know, but I couldn’t have helped, being so… confrontational with you.” She looked towards her hands. “You and I are in similar fields, I was just there first.  Instead of… trying to understand, I kept you out.” She explained. 

“I didn’t…realize your feelings, and neither did I realize… well.  You and Ana had something. I regret…some of my choices now. I had to tell you that.”

Moira felt numb at her statement, like the floor had been ripped out from under her.  Anger would have bubbled in her, had her emotions not been dampened. But… she could only lick her lips, and try to finish this accursed conversation. “I was already out casted.”  She muttered, hoping to  _ absolve _ Angela of whatever sin she came here over. “There’s not much you could have done, and it doesn’t bother me as much as you think.”  The words tasted bitter in her mouth, and with gritted teeth she realized that, no, she was  _ feeling _ something.

Anger.  Hurt. Bitterness. 

Did Angela really think she could solve any of this now?  Who was there beside themselves to hear her confession of wrongdoing?  It wasn’t like anyone would care, not anyone who was still alive, anyway.

The ones who Moira had wanted to hear this were long gone, and both the longing for others and the fact it hurt to hear it when they couldn’t as well got under her skin and grabbed that dead thing in her chest, shaking it and preparing to shock it. 

“Perhaps, at least, I should have been more understanding of your desire for advancement of science.  There were times that… I too thought Overwatch held me back.” Angela admitted, quiet. “Being associated with Overwatch meant I was unable to help many of the people I longed to.  Politics were never my field, but…I’ve seen enough of them for my lifetime. Helping others shouldn’t be a political issue.”

Moira cocked her eyebrow at that admission, “Perhaps you should visit another time then, and I’ll show you what’s possible when you allow yourself to give in to the desire for advancement.”  She murmured, voice hinting at a secret.

Angela’s smile dimmed some at that, but she nodded.  “Perhaps- but another time. You were expecting company.  So I will leave you to that…” Angela shifted, before looking to the flowers on her desk.  “Please take care of those, I included some instructions, they were her favorite.”

Moira looked down towards the flowers on her desk, the shock of them being Ana’s favorite making that animal inside her come back to unfortunate life making her falter.  “Mmm.” She nodded, focusing on the bouquet, approaching them and setting down her teacup. “Thank you for stopping by,” She said without any feeling behind it.

They seemed to be water lilies- no… These were lotuses, she realized absently. 

The sweet, delicate purple petals entranced her for the moment, and Moira didn’t even realize that Angela had returned her polite send off and seen herself out. 

She was so caught up in feeling the petals, curiosity eating at her with questions she might never know answers to- for example, why were these Ana’s favorite?

Maybe they reminded her of home, Moira reasoned with herself, fingers dropping from the delicate flower, finding the stiff paper attached to it by a prettily wrapped up with a bright yellow ribbon.  Egyptians do love their flowers, and after a minute of reading the card, she understood that these were the national flower. 

Blue lotuses. 

On the other side of the card, there were instructions to plant them into a pot with a decent amount of water, or a pond, and to take care, as they would undoubtedly grow quite rapidly, so to make sure not to plant them somewhere they’d become invasive. 

Moira walked to her patio in the center of her spacious new home, and found the center pond with its steadily flowing stream.  She lowered herself to the floor, and took the materials from Angela’s gift out, placing them beside her. She dumped the soil in carefully, but no matter how carefully she did it, it dirtied the purity of the water, yet Moira pressed forward.  She took the tubers, those flowers that lay innocently, damningly next to her. And without a moments hesitation she planted them into their new home, her hands shaking, but not at the cold water.

When she drew her hands back, they were dirtied and soaked. And she stared for a long moment, before something that wasn’t quite a sob caught itself in her chest.

There wasn’t a body, she told herself halfheartedly. Even if she had told Widowmaker congratulations on ending her, she felt…sure to some degree it wasn’t as it had appeared.  But that wasn’t really where her sadness lied. She felt certain that…Ana survived, to some degree. No…it was something else. Which one hurt her more was…an unknown.

_ She had been perfect, just for a moment _ .

With those muddy, dirty hands, Moira placed the rocks on top of the soil, careful not to squish the newly planted blue lotuses, as much as some part of her screamed to.  Was it that piece of her that was supposedly broken, or everything else that made her,  _ her  _ that begged her to kill it? 

She couldn’t really say, only that she found herself unable to do it, her hands shaking as she desperately drank in that sight of the flowers growing up from mud, the feeling with it at owning some part of Ana.

The flowers and their leaves delicately rested on top of the water, and the sunlight shone down on them and glistened like the moonlight had on Ana’s bared skin, stretched above Moira’s.  She closed her eyes to remember that moment, and sat there, lost in thought, in time, with her muddied hands and sodden front cold and abjectly disgusting from reaching again and again into her pond. 

“Moira?”  Reaper’s voice called, looking for her from the front room of her home. 

That was right.  She opened her eyes, and allowed herself to stand, and begin walking back towards her patient.  She still had work to do. 

“What happened to you?”  Gabriel asked, noticing how dirty Moira had gotten herself- she was never one to want to get so dirty. 

“It’s of no matter.”  Moira brushed him off, shaking her head.  “Allow me to change- I have some new  _ ideas _ for our treatment plan.”  Moira leisurely removed her soiled lab coat, and nodded as she went to her bedroom to clean up. “All that’s left for us is forward.”

Gabriel,  _ Reaper _ nodded, body smoking, as he followed her down their path into the shadows once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Once more we found ourselves roaming, back on that same road that saw us coming, driven in spite of ourselves. We were limping and groaning and leaning on one another. Our thoughts were dwelling on the coming dawn, rising suddenly, giving shape to the earth, with grief and care in its folds. And the harsh, inexorable day loomed ahead like a huge monster, bigger than the sun. Stark and merciless, awaiting, his eyes spitting fire as we approached, awed and quivering, knowing full well there was no escape.”   
> \- Yusuf Idris, “All In A Summer’s Night”. 
> 
>  
> 
> XXXXX
> 
>  
> 
> 2076
> 
> Mail delivery to Akande
> 
> Several newspapers detailing recent events, including a Deadlock rally in the US, papers covering what has been going on with the Shimada family, and other current events relevant to his interests- most importantly, about the assassination of Mondatta, omnic rights leader, in London. 
> 
> A package, containing a smaller letter hidden amongst its folds.
> 
> Content of a letter sent to Dr. O’Deorain, stolen from the mail on it’s way to Oasis: a bullet from a Kinamura gun, and a poem in lieu of letter. 
> 
> Is there a way we can meet and share our love once more?  
> In the winter I used to wait on hot coals for your visits.  
> Now I feel worse since you’ve gone and confirmed my fears.  
> The nights roll on, but absence stays and patience won’t free me from longing’s grip.  
> I hope God waters the new land that’s become your home. 
> 
> A note written on a post-it:
> 
> Doomfist, you should take note that Amari lives and she apparently is planning on becoming involved in our activities once again. She could very well threaten the delicate balance of our ecosystem here. Reaper doesn’t yet know, but this was a close call. I had been pestering Dr. O’Deorain for a seat in Oasis, when I found this note in her mailbox. It had no real return address, sent just from a post office in a hospital in Poland. 
> 
> Your plans better work out fine from prison, or we could all be in trouble soon enough. Better yet, you get out already. Talon’s current leadership is doing poorly without its real ideological head, and even Dr. O’Deorain seems bored of what Vialli has her doing. Her hands staying idle bodes ill for us, given what her idle hands did to her previous employers.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Dr. Sanjay Korpal


End file.
